If you’re like me, you’ve probably taken thousands of photos on your device Iphone over the years. But now you want to copy it to your computer for editing or just to save it. Not a problem; There are several ways to do this.
You can simply connect your iPhone to your computer via a USB cable and access photos from your phone. You can use the Windows Photos app to import photos from your phone to a specific folder. If you take advantage of OneDrive, you can automatically upload new photos you take on your iPhone to your OneDrive Photos folder. And you can always sync your photos with iCloud.
Let’s explore each method so you can figure out which one works best for you.
Connect your phone to your computer
The simplest way to transfer photos is to connect your iPhone to PC via USB.
Your phone should appear as a device in File Explorer. Double click on your iPhone icon and scroll down through the Internal Storage and DCIM folders.
You should see one or more subfolders, each with a number indicating the year and month the photos were taken.
Open the folder containing the photos you want to access. From there, open another window in File Explorer indicating the folder you want to copy the photos to. Select the photos to transfer and then drag and drop them or copy and paste them into the folder on your computer (shape 1).
Figure 1: Select your photos.
Screenshot / Lance Whitney
Although this seems like the easiest way to transfer photos, it doesn’t always work reliably. Sometimes the DCIM folder does not appear. Other times, your most recent photos may not appear. In these cases, disconnecting your phone to your computer and then reconnecting it may fix this problem.
Another option is to import photos to your computer using Microsoft’s Photos app. To do this, connect your iPhone to your computer via USB. Open the Windows Photos app. Click on the import icon in the upper right corner and select the “From a connected device” option (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Import from a connected device.
Screenshot / Lance Whitney
The app should detect the connected iPhone and display the photos stored on it. By default, photos will be imported into the Pictures folder under your user account, but you can change that by clicking on the Change destination link and selecting a different folder.
Click the Select drop-down menu and choose whether you want to import all folders or only those since the last import.
You can also select all photos for a particular month and year or select individual photos manually. Moreover, you can choose to delete all the photos on your phone after importing them.
After configuring the import, click the “Import .” button [x number] From [x] items” and the photos will be moved to the chosen destination folder on your computer. If you choose to delete photos from your phone, you will be asked to confirm the deletion as a final step (Figure 3).
Screenshot / Lance Whitney
Use OneDrive
If you already use OneDrive to back up and sync your files, you can include it to back up and sync photos from your iPhone to your computer. To set this up, download and install the OneDrive iOS App on your phone if you are not already using it. Open the app and tap the Photos icon at the bottom. Press the play button to load the camera.
You can choose to upload selected photos, allow access to all photos, or not allow access to them. You’ll want to select the Allow access to all photos option. Your photos are then uploaded and shown on the Photos screen of the OneDrive app (Figure 4).
Figure 4: OneDrive is requesting access to the photos.
Shots / Lance Whitney
On your computer, open the OneDrive folder, select Photos, and then select Camera Roll. In the Camera Roll, you will see subfolders for the year and then the month. Open one of the month’s folders to see the photos inside. You can either leave the photos in OneDrive accessible on your computer or copy them to a local folder (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Pictures in OneDrive.
Screenshot / Lance Whitney
Use iCloud Photos
Another option to copy your iPhone photos to your Windows PC is to use iCloud Photos. This provides access to your photos not only on your computer but on any other Apple device that syncs with iCloud. On your iPhone, go to Settings and select your name at the top of the screen. Tap Setup for iCloud, select Photos, then toggle on Sync this iPhone. You can also tap the shared albums toggle if you want to share or access shared albums with other people (Figure 6).
Figure 6: Enable iCloud Photo Sync.
Shots / Lance Whitney
Next, you will need to download a file iCloud for Windows From the Microsoft Store. Open the application after installation and click the Options button for images. Check the options for iCloud Photos and Shared Albums if they are not already selected. Click Done and then click Apply (Fig. 7).
Figure 7: Enable iCloud Photos.
Screenshot / Lance Whitney
Open File Explorer and click on the entry for iCloud Photos. You should now see all your synced photos (Figure 8).
Figure 8: Your iCloud Photos on Windows.
Screenshot / Lance Whitney
iCloud for Windows is a useful option for a Windows PC, but it is saddled with several major flaws. The app dumps all of your photos into one flat folder structure, so they aren’t organized according to any folders or albums you might have created on your iPhone or in iCloud. Also, the app does not support true two-way sync, so if you delete a photo in the iCloud folder on your Windows PC, it will not be deleted in iCloud or on your other devices.
Best options
Overall, I think Windows Photos is your best bet to manually transfer photos from your iPhone to your Windows PC, and OneDrive is the best way to transfer them automatically.