I recently installed digiKam (8.3.0) for my parents because it seemed like a great piece of software. Last night I got the camera import working for a smartphone (Pixel) on my Linux machine. This morning I went to do the same on my parents’ Windows machine and found that the import works differently. There is no preset list, there is no auto-detect, and I can’t figure out how to make it connect. It’s not an issue with the phone or computer, as Windows Photos keeps automatically launching and asking to import. I tried looking it up online, but there seems to be very little information about digiKam on Windows. It looks like this may be a known issue, but it also looks like a solution was found a few years ago.
Did you ever find the solution. I just installed 8.4.0 and am having the same issue. Maybe there’s a plugin I need to install to have it detect a PTP-over-USB device?
So I found this blurb in the docs
Camera import is currently not supported on Windows Systems due limitations in the Gphoto2 library.
An easy-to-use camera interface is provided that will connect to your digital camera and download photographs directly into digiKam Albums. More than 2500 digital cameras are supported by the gPhoto library.
I do see Google Pixel listed on the gphoto supported cameras list. When I go to Import > Cameras there are zero cameras listed, only Add Camera Manually. And in the Manage your camera devices window there is no Auto-Detect button like there is shown in the docs page on camera settings.
Are we supposed to compile and install the gphoto drivers ourselves on windows?
If I remember right, the issue seems to be that digiKam on Windows can’t see MTP mounts. I ended up creating a PowerShell script to move the photos onto the local drive, then open the import dialog on that folder.
I’m setting my phone to PTP mode, though. And the UI is lacking documented elements, like the Auto-Detect button.
I don’t know what to tell you. I’m an end user, just like you, not a digiKam developer. I don’t know why the Auto-Detect button is missing, or why digiKam can’t see the files in a phone even if added manually. I found an imperfect solution that works for me (that I can share if you’d like), but I don’t know what the core problem is.