Ever since device makers armed mobile phones with top-of-the-line cameras, many have not stopped snapping and capturing those precious life moments. And, when easy Internet connectivity came to the mobile phone, many also started sharing their photos to friends, family, and in many cases also to the world at large.
Yet, despite great strides in digital imaging and mobile interconnectivity, how easy is it to share photos between devices, especially those running different platforms — say, between the iPhone and an Android phone? If you own both — or are switching over from iPhone to Android — you will eventually need to know how to transfer photos and images from iPhone to Android.
In this post, I’ll show you several ways to transfer your photos, albums, and galleries from your iPhone to Android.
Nov 19, 2017 - Whether you regularly use your phone to watch porn or you've merely thought. Protect yourself by downloading the free app AdblockPlus.
The easiest way to transfer your photos is to simply drag-and-drop the images from the iPhone’s default photo directory/folder to Android’s image folder.
For this method, you will need a Windows PC and the USB cables for both your iPhone and Android phone. Make sure that you’ve installed the device drivers of both phones so that they will be detected by your PC.
Follow the steps below to drag-and-drop your iPhone photos to your Android phone:
That’s the quickest drag-and-drop method that I’ve ever used. Sometimes, however, the copying process can stall — and can even completely hang — for some unknown reason, especially when transferring a very large number of images. I usually take an intermediate step by copying the images from iPhone to PC first, then copying from PC to Android. This requires the use of a temporary folder on the PC for storing the iPhone photos.
As far as manual methods go, I favor the drag-and-drop method because it allows me to select which photos to bring over from iPhone to Android. If you have no use for such selectivity, you can just simply import all your iPhone images to your computer in one go. Then, from your computer you can transfer them to your Android device. The following steps will show you how this is done:
The two manual methods will transfer images from your iPhone to your Android device. However, these methods will only transfer images saved in your iPhone’s Camera Roll. Images transferred to your iPhone via iTunes will not be included.
Apps can also help solve the problem of transferring photos from iPhone to Android. The Send Anywhere (File Transfer) app, which is free for both iPhone and Android, is an example of an app that can help with such task.
The Send Anywhere app allows you to wirelessly transfer files — not just images — from iPhone to Android and vice-versa, without the need to physically connect your devices to a computer.
The file that you want to send to the other device is actually uploaded to the cloud. This means that for the app to work its wonders, both phones must be connected to the Internet and both phones must be running the Send Anywhere app.
For security and privacy, the sending device generates for the receiver an authentication key either in the form of a PIN, a QR code, or a Web URL.
If you already have the Send Anywhere app installed on both your iPhone and Android phone, follow these steps to transfer your photos:
The popular cloud storage service, Dropbox, can also offer a convenient means for transferring images from iPhone to Android. You need to install the Dropbox app on both your iPhone and Android phone. The app is free.
To be able to bring over to your Android those photos stored on your iPhone, you need to upload them to your Dropbox account first. To be able to upload and share files, login to your Dropbox account on your iPhone. You can sign up for a free Dropbox account if you don’t have one yet.
Also, you can enable the Camera Upload feature if you want newly captured photos to be automatically uploaded to your Dropbox after you capture the photos. This also uploads existing images in your Camera Roll.
For photos that are not automatically synced to your cloud-based Dropbox, you may manually upload them from any of your iPhone folders/albums to your Dropbox folders. To do this, tap the Menu button (three-dot button) from within any of your Dropbox folders, tap Upload, select photos, and upload away. This can be particularly useful if you want to share photos that aren’t automatically uploaded (i.e., photos that are stored in a different folder or location).
Now that your photos are in the cloud, the next logical step is to enable your Android phone to be able to access them.
To allow your Android phone to access your Dropbox photos, login to the same Dropbox account as you are using on your iPhone. If you do this, you’ll be replicating the folder structure of your cloud-based Dropbox right on your Android phone and your cloud files will be accessible to you.
Or, if you don’t want to use the same Dropbox account or you want to share only some of your iPhone photos to another Android user via Dropbox, you can use Dropbox’s sharing feature. You can share just one file or many, or an entire folder.
Just a very quick note here about the conveniences of the Android version of the app. Dropbox’s folder sharing feature in the Android app exists in two forms: “Send a Link” and “Invite to Folder,” both of which are accessible by long-tapping on a folder name, then selecting Share.
Send a Link lets you share folders but without sharing file management privileges (i.e., the recipient can only view the files, download them, or add them to her or his own Dropbox account). The Invite to Folder option lets you grant file management privileges, which means that both you and the invited user can do stuff to the files in the folder (e.g., delete files, add new files, etc.).
But, here’s some sad news: In the Dropbox app for iOS, you can use the Send a Link option only. Sharing a link is accomplished on the iPhone by opening the target folder in the Dropbox app, tapping on the Share icon (rounded box with upward-pointing arrow) at the upper-right corner of the screen, and selecting the app to use for sending the link. For simple copying of photos from iPhone to Android, this method will suffice.
If you really want to allow other users to be able to manage your Dropbox folder(s), you’ll need to walk the extra mile by logging in to your Dropbox account through a Web browser and set up the shared files or folders (i.e., invite users to your folders) through the Web interface.
On some devices with Dropbox integration (e.g., Galaxy S4, HTC One), you may be able to sync your photos from cloud to phone automatically over Wi-Fi. So, each time your iPhone uploads a photo to Dropbox, the linked Android phone also automatically gets a copy and you can view the shared photos in the Gallery app. You don’t need to export the photos to your SD card for you to view them or share them with your other apps. Unfortunately, you cannot use the Gallery app to manage the shared photos; that is, you can’t delete shared photos or move photos via the Gallery app.
On Android devices with no Dropbox integration, you may not be able to browse your Dropbox-stored photos and albums in your Gallery app. For your photos to appear in the Gallery app, you need to first export them to your SD card through the Dropbox app.
Thanks to mobile devices such as the iPhone and Android phones, we can take and share snapshots of what’s happening around us. If you have an iPhone and you want to copy or transfer your photos to your Android phone, you can do so easily using any of the methods described in this post. /ricoh-r5c592-memory-stick-host-controller-driver-windows-7-vostro-1500.html.
What method do you use to transfer your photos from iPhone to Android? Tell us about your experiences with photo transferring. We’d love to hear about them in the comment box.
(with contributions from Elmer Montejo)
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.iOS has historically been extremely stringent about what you can and cannot do with your iPhone. This extends to what you can and cannot download onto the device. While that system has gradually relaxed over time, Apple’s security restrictions look prohibitively strict in comparison to Android’s “anything goes” policy.
While you can download a number of different files to your device, iOS users don’t have the USB-drive level access provided by either an Android device or a jailbroken iPhone. If that’s the level of access you want, you’ll need to apply a jailbreak to your iPhone, which is hopefully running an older version of iOS.
Fortunately, most reasonable needs are met by the existing application structure, especially by the introduction of the Files app in iOS 11. Its share extension allows users to save an enormous variety of web-based files to their device. There aren’t many reasons you’d specifically require your device to be able to download literally any file type, and it could represent a huge security hole if that was permitted. Perhaps not for experienced users.
But for the enormous population of people who don’t read technical posts like this one, downloading damaging files would likely happen with frustrating regularity. Witness Windows and Android’s own enormous anti-virus tool market, which is non-existent in part thanks to the greater degree of user restriction present in iOS.
Surprisingly, transferring files with iTunes remains your most reliable tool. It now allows for a broad range of transfers to your iPhone, including file types previously prohibited. Provided you have an application on your device that is associated with a file’s extension, you can download that file to your device. This method will work on either macOS or Windows. If you want to transfer photos, music, videos, ringtones or similar common file types, this is your best bet.
1. Connect your device to your computer with a USB cable.
2. Open iTunes.
3. Click on the Device icon next to the media dropdown.
4. Click on “File Sharing” in the sidebar menu.
5. Select the appropriate application from the list. You can base this on your own intuition (epub files go with your ereader program, for example).
We can do more than just common file types by downloading one of several file browser apps in the iOS App Store. Our favorite was Documents by long-time iOS app developer Readdle. Browser and FileManager are also good choices, though the first can throw up some obnoxious ads if you don’t pay the $1 purchase fee for the ad-free version.
1. Navigate to File Sharing within iTunes following the previous steps.
2. Click on the “Documents” app in the pane on the right.
3. The Documents app can accept pretty much any kind of file, from Excel spreadsheets to video files. Click the “Add …” button at the bottom of the list module to select the file you’d like to add.
4. On your iOS device open the Documents app.
5. Click on the “iTunes Files” folder.
6. Access your transferred files. Tap on a file to open it and preview it within the Documents app.
Documents has even more ways of transferring files, including via a wireless server connection. Check that out (and more) in the “Documents Guide” document included with the Documents application.
There are apps available that claim to work outside of Apple’s iOS restrictions. They don’t. The security restrictions wouldn’t be worth much if they could be bypassed by publicly-accessible apps. The only way to lift those restrictions is via jailbreaking, which is certainly an option. But for the vast majority of users, working within Apple’s limits will be sufficient.