Earlier this week NeoFinder discovered a bug in the macOS’s image capture app. The bug adds 1.5 MB data to every photo transferred from iOS devices to macOS. It potentially takes gigabytes of data which takes a lot of storage space. It is now reported that the bug does not only affect the image capture app but also affects more apps on macOS 10.14.6 and later.
Norbert Doerner from NeoFinder who discovered the bug told that this bug affects almost all the macOS apps that import photos from the iOS devices and cameras. The apps that are affected include Affinity Photo, Adobe Lightroom, iPhoto, PhaseOne Media Pro, and Aperture apps.
According to the research done by the NeoFinder developers, the bug affects other apps also because the bug is inside the framework of Apple’s ImageCaptureCore. This framework is part of macOS which all developers use to connect to the cameras for importing photos. According to the new report, Apple’s Photo app is the only app that the bug does not affect. The reason is that the Photos app uses undocumented APIs for conversion with the iOS devices.
Apple is currently aware of the bug. Until now there has been no patch or any fix for this bug. The bug affects only when HEIC files are converted into Jpg format. When the conversion happens the bug adds empty 1.5 MB data to every photo that the users copy onto their mac. The only solution currently is to prevent your iOS devices to take photos in the HEIC format so that when transferring it does not have to convert into Jpg format.
