How to get photos and videos from your phone to your PC

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WINDOWS 11 By Lance Whitney Your mobile phone may be home to thousands of photos and videos. Now’s the time to back up and sync them to your Windows c
[See the full post at: How to get photos and videos from your phone to your PC]

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ibe98765, 280park, fisher75, DLivesInTexas, lmacri, Alex5723

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For bulk transfers I still use the USB method. But if I just want to copy one or two, I use Snapdrop (https://snapdrop.net, although I host my own instance of it on a Debian VM). You just visit that site with both devices on the same network and you can transfer data between them. The file transfer only occurs locally and the source is on Github.

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I auto backup each new photo on my iPhone to iCloud and Google Photos.
I don’t copy to my PC.

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Hi Lance:

My Android phone never stops pestering me to auto-sync / back up all my photos to the Google cloud.

Perhaps you can write a follow-on piece about the merits or otherwise of this option?

— AWRon

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I use Amazon Photos. Unlimited storage if you are Prime member. Storing photos in the Google cloud counts toward your storage limit which is not unlimited.

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ibe98765

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No cables required.  I use an “FTP Server” app.  It’s fast and easy.   I open the app and it shows me the IP address and port number to connect to.  Then I open FileZilla on my laptop, connect to that address/port and select the files & images I want to transfer.   After the transfer, I close both applications and remove my presence from the ether leaving no trace.

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I can’t believe all these comments about cloud this and cloud that or just use this app and tap here then enter this, secure server here, then tap that, etc, etc,…! Simple cable to PC, (no apps or special software needed), then to one or more offline external drives, and you know you have your photo’s in a safe place. Yeah, ok, I understand that you want them accessible from any place at any time that a mobile device operates, but why does it seem like your responses are all cloud exclusively? Oh my… something so simple made so complex requiring passwords, apps, secure servers and encrypted storage by a faceless corp… You know that encryption won’t protect your data from being deleted/wiped by a malicious entity (or bored teenager in Yugoslavia) that is targeting the cloud storage provider, or a software glitch, or someones careless system update, or, or, or… right? All of my important data is right here, offline on 2 or more separate, air gapped drives, and I’m not even a techie or have sensitive data! Sorry for the rant. Just in a “old man yells at cloud” mood.  

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wavy, NaNoNyMouse, windbg, 280park, rizzquery, LH

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I love OneDrive and use it to back up the photos on my iPhone. Problem is, it backs up the photos and does not move the photos. So, after all is synced, you have two copies of every photo on your phone. This is unnecessary and doubles the storage space used on your phone. MS needs a OneDrive option to enable one to MOVE files from the iPhone to the OneDrive folder.

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The camera roll on your device only uploads to OneDrive – it does not sync photos both ways. That means you can delete uploaded photos and videos from your device, and the copies in OneDrive won’t be affected.

Automatically save photos and videos with OneDrive on iOS

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I love transferring my photos from my mobile phone to my computer and then onto my external hard drive, via a usb connection, but then I bought a Google Pixel 7 pro handset, bad mistake.

I believed all the hype and the handset performed well, taking excellent photos which I transferred by usb to my computer. This was until the day it stopped doing just that and try as hard as I could, the usb transferring method was dead in the water.

I tried hundreds of online searches to find a solution to my problem, but none were forthcoming, but one thing I found was someone stating that Google had the usb method pulled so as to get users to start using the cloud for all file transfers.

The other ways of transferring photos, as mentioned in the article, seem to work, but I like the old usb method.

My wife’s Google Pixel 6 still transferred files via usb as mine did before, but mine had stopped working that way completely.

In the end, after a few months, I sold my Google Pixel 7 handset and will not buy a Google one again as I don’t like being bullied!

 

 

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windbg

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In Android photos, if I want to transfer a few photos for problem documentation/research, I select them and then SHARE them to an email account or Google Drive.  Quick & easy.

Note that transfers to a Gmail account face a 25mb total size limit.

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SueW

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Here is a simple method I use to download to my Windows computer without special software:

Connect the iPhone via USB.

Open File Explorer and right click on Apple iPhone device.

Select Import pictures and videos (you may need to wait a few seconds so the iPhone is fully recognized).

It may take a few minutes to scan all images and then give you the option to Review, organize, and group items to import, or (the one I pick) Import all new items now.

You can enter a Name (eg California vacation) that can be included in the Folder name (I leave it blank).

You can select more options to specify the import folders for photos and videos (eg C:\iPhone photos).  And within that a Folder name (I specify Date Taken + Name), and File name (I specify Original File Name).  These options stick for future downloads so you may only need to specify them once.

This is an easy way to download new images and they go into folders by date taken.  Or of course you can play with the options to download what you want and where.

 

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