Trouble Connecting EOS R8 to EOS Utility on a Mac

[tjdowling]

I am having issues connecting my R8 to my Mac via the EOS Utility. I have the latest software and have gone through the user manual. The message I keep getting is:

"Communication with the camera via USB cannot be established.
Start EOS Utility after closing all the apps that communicate with the camera, and then turn on the camera again."

I am unaware of any apps that I have that would be trying to communicate with my camera in the background. Anyone know what's going on? Thanks in advance.

[petero]

I'll try!! Thanks..

[fpr6]

hello,
I have the same problem with the R5 and the R6.
I always wait a long time before installing a new operating system, but there are always problems with canon...
one way to connect the camera to the computer is tether shooting via lightroom.
This works, but you can't access all the camera functions there.

[jrhoffman75]

If you just want to download images Apple Image Capture is free 

[petero]

Many thanks. Ironically I just discovered that you can directly download to Apple Photos on a Mac... more and more things to tempt me away from Lightroom!

[petero]

Didn't work. I give up!

[Yanko]

I think I found a solution, it appears that MacOS Sonoma on Apple Silicon checks all USB accessories when they are connected (for security reasons I guess) and this check is apparently happening when connecting the camera with USB cable as well. That seems to be preventing EOS Utility working correctly. In my tests, if I set "Allow accessories to connect" to "Ask Every Time" in the Privacy & Security pane in System Settings, the computer will ask if you want to allow an accessory every time when you connect it, but after allowing the camera, EOS Utility works, at least for me. 

[petero]

this sounds really promising. However, when I open 'Privacy and Security', where does it ask me my option for "Allow Accessories to connect" - it doesn't appear as an item???

thanks in advance!

[petero]

I should add my iMac isn't Apple Silicon, its a 27" (2020) model, running the latest Sonoma.

[jrhoffman75]

Scroll to the very bottom of the window.

[husrona]

Hi everyone, first of all my apologies for taking it a bit too long to respond. I promised to record a video for you to show you how to get it to work. Initially I said that you need to disable all the applications that are requesting camera. Today that did not work for me. Probably due to the upgrade to Sonoma or probably the reason is what I am about to describe.

What I figured out was that you need to quit every single applications that might request camera access. In the video that I created you will see in the foreground that Lightroom is active. The moment I quit Lightroom there were no more applications of such kind that would request access to camera. You can also see that the camera started working.