As your iPhone photo library grows, there always be a time for you to consider importing photos from iPhone to Mac computer as backup. Read on this tutorial to find the best iPhone photos to Mac importing solutions.
Quick Start
- Mac OS X (macOS Sierra) offers a good number of iPhone to Mac photo importing methods, like the Photos app (formerly named iPhoto), iCloud Photo Library, AirDrop, etc.
- If you want to import photos from iPhone Camera Roll and Photo Library to Mac, and want to find your photos by Albums, it's suggested to have a try with PrimoPhoto, a simple yet professional iPhone Photo Manager software.
PrimoPhoto – Your Top iPhone Photo Transfer
Don't have PrimoPhoto? Download it now prior to reading this guide and it will save you quite a lot of time. Click Here to Free Download
With the shiny jet black iPhone 7/7 Plus coming to us with its new features: 12-megapixel lens, dual cameras, water resistance etc., many of you may have already replaced your old iPhone or Android phone with the new iPhone. However, whether if you’re still worried about the space shortage of storing photos (Live Photos), videos and movies on your 32GB iPhone 7? The most widely used and safe way to keep the photos/videos/movies on your iPhone is to transfer them to your Mac (macOS Sierra included).
Step 4: Click the download icon in the upper right corner, looking like a down arrow in a cloud, and select a folder to download iCloud photos to your PC or Mac. Note: Actually, you can easily download all iCloud photos by pressing Ctrl + A to select all photos if you have less than 1000 items there, then clicking on the download button.
Carelessly deleted some photos from your iPhone 7 and want to recover them? Primo iPhone Data Recovery is a new way to get back deleted pictures from iPhone even without backup.
- How to Get Photos off iPhone to Mac via Email. You can get photos off iPhone to Mac by sending an email to yourself. This method only suites for those who haven’t many photos to transfer. Step 1: Go to the Photos app in your iPhone, and select the photo you want to transfer, and click the “Share” button at the bottom left.
- Click the Import To pop-up menu at the bottom left-side of the interface to specify a folder where you want your iPhone photos to be save on Mac. Select the iPhone photos you want to import, and then press Import button at the bottom right-corner to download only those photos to the Mac; or press the Import All button to import all the.
On our previous guide, we’ve shown you How to transfer photos from iPhone to PC Windows, and here we continue to tell you how to import pictures from iPhone to Mac (macOS Sierra) without hassles.
Table of Content:
Part 1: How to Import Photos from iPhone to Mac | Photos
Photos app for OS X is available now on OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 and later, which replaces the old iPhoto and Aperture with a simpler photo editor and library manager. Here is how to import photos from your iPhone to Mac Yosemite or El Capitan with Photos app.
Step 1. Connect your iPhone to Mac, and open Photos app.
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Step 2. Click on Import, you can click Import All New Items or manually select multiple photos, and then click Import XX Selected.
Step 3. Then the newly imported photos will show in an album named 'Last Import'. You can also find the photos in the All Photos album.
Part 2: How to Sync Photos from iPhone to Mac | iCloud Photo Library
With iCloud Photo Library, your iPhone photos will automatically sync to the iCloud and should appear on your Photos app as long as you enable this feature on both your iPhone and Mac.
Step 1. On your iPhone: Settings > iCloud > Photos > Turn on iCloud Photo Library.
Step 2. On your Mac: Open Preference > iCloud > Sign in with your Apple ID > Check Photos > Click Options next Photos > Enable iCloud Photo Library > Done.
Step 3. Now you can access photos synced with your iPhone on the Mac Photos app or by logging into icloud.com.
Your iCloud account will get more crowded when you enable iCloud Photo Library feature for it counts on the 5GB free space. You may need to buy more iCloud storage, and prices start at $0.99 per month for 50GB of storage, and range to $9.99 per month for a full terabyte.
Part 3. How to Sync Photos from iPhone to Mac | AirDrop
To import only a few pictures from iPhone to Mac, AirDrop is a nice choice. You need to have iOS 8 or later on your iPhone and the Mac needs to be running OS X Yosemite or later.
Step 1. On your Mac: Open Finder > Click on AirDrop > Click on Turn on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to enable AirDrop. Remember to set your Mac to be discovered by Contacts or Everyone.
Step 2. On your iPhone: Swipe up to open the Control Center > Tap on AirDrop > Choose from Contacts Only or Everyone as you need.
Step 3. Go to the Photos app on your iPhone > Select a photo > tap the Share button > Your Mac's name should appear > tap on it.
Step 4. On your Mac, you will see a pop-up window, click on Save.
Part 4: Transfer Photos from iPhone to Mac | PrimoPhoto
Want a more flexible method on importing iPhone photos to Mac? To bring you more convenience on photo management is what PrimoPhoto designed for. It's easy & quick to import photos from Camera Roll, Photo Library or Albums from your iPhone to Mac (Yosemite & El Capitan included). It's all your choice to import ALL or SELECTED photos from iPhone to Mac.
Get Your Best iPhone Photo Transfer
Designed to fit effortlessly into your iPhone photo management
Download NowStep 1. Open PrimoPhoto, and connect your iPhone to Mac.
Step 2. In the Export to Mac section, select the photos in Camera Roll or Photo Library, or Albums.
Step 3. Set the destination on your Mac, and click the Export button.
Part 5: Best iPhone to Mac Comparison Table
1. Photos | 2. iCloud Photo Library | 3. AirDrop | 4. PrimoPhoto | |
Camera Roll | ||||
Photo Stream | -- | -- | ||
Photo Library | -- | Conflict with iTunes Synced Photos | -- | |
Single Album | -- | -- | ||
Requirements | OS X 10.10.3 & Later | iOS 8.3 & Later | OS X Yosemite & iOS 8 | All |
Time Needed | 3 Mins | Depends on WLAN | Depends on WLAN | 2 Mins |
It is quite obvious that PrimoPhoto is simpler & more comprehensive on managing iPhone photos compared to the methods we mentioned. Now start taking a tour with PrimoPhoto >
Importing Photos From Icloud
More iPhone Photos Related Articles:
- How to Recover Deleted Messages on iPhone - Check on this guide to learn how to recover deleted iPhone texts.
- How to Restore Messages from iCloud- This post shows you to retrieve messages from iCloud.
- How to Recover Deleted Photos from iPhone 7-This guide tells you how to recover deleted iPhone photos.
- How to Recover Lost Notes on iPhone 5/5s/5c- Read to get back deleted notes on iPhone 5/5s/5c.
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Using an iPhone to take, edit, and share photos of our lives has never been easier or more fun. It’s become common — if not standard — to see smartphones at cafes, concerts, and even nature, as we all try to capture our perspective of the world around us.
Some of these photos will be posted to social media or sent to friends right away, but most need to be stored on a device for safe and easy access in the future. As you might want to edit or just back up your images on your computer, understanding how to download photos from iPhone to Mac is essential.
If you take a significant amount of photos with your smartphone, there are a few issues you’ll eventually run into: the amount of storage that’s being used up on your iPhone, the safety of your photos, and the ability to access your photos from different devices.
All solutions for how to download pictures from iPhone to Mac are fairly easy to implement and will help you free up more storage, as well as back up and retain access to your photos. In case you’re filming and editing lots of videos, you might be interested in how to transfer videos from iPhone to Mac too. Luckily, both can be solved the same way!
The most obvious Mac photo and video management solutions are native to Apple, using the Photos app and iCloud Photo Library. But there are plenty of third-party apps that in some cases provide even more flexibility for your workflow.
How To Import Photos From iPhone To Mac
There are several different methods you can use to upload photos from iPhone to Mac. Some have been available for years or are built right into the iOS, while others are more recent and innovative — the choice is up to you! Let’s discuss them all.
How to import photos from iPhone using Apple iCloud Library
Apple’s iCloud allows you to store and consolidate content across all of your devices on the cloud server, starting with a free-tier plan that covers 5 GB of storage space. Setting up iCloud is easy, just sign in with your Apple ID in System Preferences and then use the same Apple ID on another device. After that you can transfer photos from iPhone to Mac using the iCloud Photo Library. Start with your phone:
Go to Settings ➙ Photos
Toggle iCloud Photos and “Upload to My Photo Stream” to On
If you want to be able to share albums with other users, turn the Shared Albums setting to On as well
Next, sync your Mac:
Open System Preferences ➙ iCloud
Log in with the same Apple ID used on your iPhone
Turn on iCloud Drive
Select the options you’d like to use
The media from your Apple Photos app will now be transferred to your Mac. Additionally, the process will import photos from iPhone to Mac automatically in the future.
A good next step after figuring out how to sync photos from iPhone to Mac is to learn how to detect duplicate pictures and avoid wasting valuable cloud storage you’re most likely paying for. Of course, you could go through your library manually, but as you take more and more pictures, this task might take hours without guaranteeing a perfect result.
Read more about how to recover permanently deleted photos from iPhone
Gemini solves the duplicate photos problem. It’s a nifty utility that scans your Apple Photos, iTunes, as well as other folders and files for any identical images and allows you to delete all the duplicates in one click. Moreover, Gemini also shows you similar files, which you can review and determine if you want to keep both, or if one of them is more relevant.
Using Gemini is as easy as it sounds:
How To Download Photos From Iphone 4 To Mac
Open Gemini from Applications
Click the plus icon
Choose the folder to scan
Select “Scan for Duplicates”
Review the results and click on Remove for those you no longer need
Transfer photos from iPhone to Mac with AirDrop
Another built-in option to transfer photos from iPhone to Mac is using the AirDrop feature, which makes it easy to send files between two Apple devices via Bluetooth. As it’s a native Apple utility, using it to import photos from iPhone to Mac is quite straightforward:
Turn on iPhone AirDrop (Bluetooth) by either swiping up to the control panel or opening Settings ➙ General ➙ AirDrop (Bluetooth) ➙ On
Similarly on Mac, go Finder ➙ AirDrop ➙ On
Enable Mac Bluetooth through System Preferences ➙ Bluetooth On
Ensure both devices are connected to the same WiFi network
Open your Apple Photos app to see the thumbnails
Select the photos or videos that you’d like to AirDrop to Mac
Tap the share icon at the bottom left of your Photos app screen
Select your Mac device name from the AirDrop section
Confirm the notification on your Mac to download pictures to iPhone, and your images will be saved in your Downloads folder
Using Dropbox to transfer photos from iPhone to Mac
You could be familiar with using Dropbox for large-file sharing between your friends and colleagues. But it’s also a good option to upload photos from iPhone to Mac for yourself.
Dropbox is a cloud-based storage and collaboration tool, and is available as an app for both your iPhone and Mac. The free Dropbox account gives you 2 GB of space for your photos, videos, or any other files. To use it to transfer photos from iPhone to Mac, you’ll need to set up an account on your iPhone first:
Install Dropbox from the App Store
Open the Dropbox app and grant access to your Photos when prompted
Tap the + (create) button
Select Upload Photos from the menu options
Tap each photo you want to upload
Go Next and choose the Dropbox folder in which to store the photos
Hit Upload
Now you can transfer photos from iPhone to Mac:
Visit dropbox.com and log in to your account
Either choose specific photos to download or the entire folder
Select Download from the menu on the right side of the screen
Files will be saved to the Downloads folder on your Mac
The most flexible app to import photos from iPhone to Mac
Automatically Download Pictures From Iphone
iCloud and Dropbox will not provide you with enough space for all your photos and videos on their free tiers. On the other hand, using a USB cable to sync photos from iPhone to Mac via iTunes is quite limiting in both space and process as well.
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Subsequently, the apparent absence of easy photo sharing and management tools has led to the development of numerous third-party apps, each with its own unique approach to the problem.
AnyTrans is a media downloader and backup manager that makes file moving simple and accessible. This customizable app will instantly back up and copy data from connected devices, so you can export various content and, of course, transfer photos from iPhone to Mac and import videos from iPhone to Mac as well. It’s a truly intuitive and simple solution:
Open AnyTrans
Check that both your iPhone and Mac are connected to the same WiFi
Connect your iPhone and Mac with a USB and allow AnyTrans access when prompted
Navigate to the Device Manager in the top menu bar
Select “Export iPhone Content to Computer”
You’ve now successfully been able to transfer photos from iPhone to Mac. The photos and videos that you download into the Photos app on Mac will also sign in and sync to iCloud, so all of your content is consolidated and backed up. Read more about how to backup iPhone.
With all of these apps available to help you manage your photos as well as tools to keep your files tidy, you won’t have to worry about taking too many shots to get that perfect one.
Best of all, both the Gemini file cleaner and AnyTrans media downloader are available through Setapp, the platform for your Mac that curates and offers over 150+ apps, and is free with a 7-day trial. You can explore every app to improve your Mac experience, as well as optimize your photo and video management to never miss a moment.