Ultimate Guide to transfer photos from or to ios device

Learn to transfer photos from your Apple device to PC, android, Mac, etc.
iphone-photography

When it comes to ios devices, sharing digital goods except photos/videos is a nightmare. Apple introduced the Airdrop feature that lets you share photos between Apple devices using Bluetooth and wifi technologies. But the feature is still limited to the ios ecosystem. Here are some of the free methods we use to transfer photos between our devices.

Google Photos – Sync Photos Anywhere with Cloud

transfer-photos-using-google-photos

With Google’s introduction of Photos, managing photos between our devices is easy. The Google photos app is available for ios and android and a web version is also available. The app allows you to free up your device space by uploading all your photos to Google servers where it is stored securely. It also makes your images searchable by identifying what is in that photo. If you haven’t yet tried it, give it a go!

Transfer photos from iOS to PC/Mac?

Transferring photos from ios device to your computer (wirelessly)

You can’t transfer photos from your idevice directly to your PC using bluetooth. However if your PC/Mac and iPhone are connected to the same wifi network then photo sharing would be possible. Here are the steps to share photos from iPhone to PC wirelessly.

  1. Download Wifi Photo Transfer from the app store to your iPhone/iPad/iPod. The app is just over 4mb and incredibly easy to use.
  2. Launch the application. It will now show you an IP address.
  3. Open that URL on your computer and you will see your photo library over there.
  4. Right-click and hit save to download the images to your computer.

You can also use Photo Transfer Wifi app to copy photos to your computer (free app).

transfer photos from ios device to your computer using wifi photo transfer app for free

Transferring photos from ios device to pc/mac (wired)

The lightning cable not only charges your iPhone but can also be used to access your phone’s photo library. It’s simple as it sounds.

  1. Connect your ios device to your computer using the lightning cable.
  2. Your device will prompt whether to trust the computer. Hit “trust this device”.
  3. On your computer, navigate to “my computer” (windows) or “Finder” (mac).
  4. Open the portable disk and you will find your photos organized into different folders.
icloud.com website for sharing photos between apple devices

Transfer photos from PC/Mac to iOS

gif showing how to transfer photos from your computer to your ios device using iTunes
  1. Connect your device to your computer and launch iTunes.
  2. Navigate to Photos in the iPhone control panel.
  3. Check the “Sync Photos” option.
  4. Select the folder containing the photos from the drop-down option below. (the entire photos in the folder will be synced)
  5. Click apply and wait for the sync to finish.

Check apple’s documentation to learn to delete itunes synced photos.

If you don’t want to use iTunes to transfer photos then use this free software from iphone-ipad-recovery

Using iCloud to transfer photos from your computer to Apple device

  1. Go to icloud.com
  2. Open the Photos app and upload the photos to your iCloud library.
  3. Your photos will now be synced across your devices provided that you have turned on iCloud for photos.

How to transfer photos from iOS to Android or vice-versa?

There are a couple of paid apps such as Photosync and Photo Transfer App that allows you to easily share photos across ios and android. But if you are going with the free option, then you will have to do some work.

iOS to Android

  1. Connect your ios device and android device to your computer.
  2. Enable mass storage option for your android phone and make sure that both the devices are displayed in “my computer”.
  3. Open the iPhone drive and navigate to the DCIM folder. Find the photo you need to transfer and copy it.
  4. Now open your android device’s drive and paste it into the required folder.

Android to iOS

  1. Connect your ios device and android device to your computer.
  2. Enable mass storage option for your android phone and make sure that both the devices are displayed in “my computer”.
  3. Open your android device’s drive, then find the photo you are looking for and copy it.
  4. Now paste into a new folder in your computer.
  5. Follow steps given in the above section (pc to ios device) to finish the process.

A much better option would be to save them online such as in Google Photos and later download them to your device. Other services such as dropbox, google drive, etc. can also be used for this purpose

How to use airdrop to transfer photos between Apple devices?

apple-airdrop-from-ipad-to-iphone


This is the easiest of all and best. You can share photos and videos between ios devices as well as mac. Follow the steps below to share a photo using airdrop.

  1. Turn on airdrop on both the devices.
  2. Select the photos you want to share and hit the share sheet icon.
  3. Tap on the user’s picture to send it to them.

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Credits
Free stock images by Pixabay

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