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How to transfer photos from your Windows PC to your iPhone
Having many pictures saved on your PC and wondering how to sync them to your iPhone? Let's see how to transfer photos from your Windows computer to iPhone.
Jasmin Woods Updated on Jan 29, 2023 2:23 PM
Taking photos is an irreplaceable way for people to seize the best moments of their lives. If you've got plenty of photos full of old memories and have saved them on your PC, or you usually use your Windows computer to edit pictures and do some post-production, you may want to transfer a copy of your photos to your iPhone so that you can see the lovely pictures at any time anywhere.
However, sharing data across different operation systems may be a headache. You can't transfer photos from a PC to an iPhone over Airdrop or Bluetooth like you usually do. Even you connect your iPhone to your PC, there is not much you can do to sync the photos to your iPhone directly. So this guide is here to introduce iPhone and Windows users a few alternatives which can help you transfer photos from PC to iPhone.
Six great alternatives for iPhone users to transfer photos across platforms.
Six ways to transfer photos from a PC to an iPhone
It used to be such a great pain to import photos or picture files from a PC to an iPhone, but it's now much easier than ever to transfer all your old photos and new edited pics from your computer to an iPhone.
While using a USB cable, either iTunes or iPhone Data Transfer can make it quick and easy to transfer your photos to your iPhone, which can also be used to move your music, videos and other documents:
If you want to transfer photos from your computer to your iPhone, one of the best reliable tools is iTunes. It's a great app for music lovers, and it's especially useful for people who would like to move their photos or picture folders from a computer to their iPhone.
Notice that the process will overwrite the existing photos in Photo Library on your iPhone while syncing the pictures to it from your computer.
First, run iTunes on your PC, and connect your iPhone to it with a USB cable. If your iPhone has never got connected to this computer before, you may need to tap 'Trust' when the alert box jumps out on your iPhone screen.
Next, click the phone icon at the top left of iTunes window. If you don't see a phone icon there, you will need to disable iCloud Photos feature on your iPhone, and connect it again.
Once connected, you can easily find the phone icon at the top left of iTunes window.
Then, choose 'Photos' from the sidebar. In 'Sync Photos' box, you can select either photos or picture folders that you want to put into your iPhone by clicking the drop-down menu.
After picking the pictures you want, click' Apply' at the bottom right corner. It will start syncing photos to your iPhone immediately. Once done, the photos you've chosen will show up in Photo Library and be sorted by date on your iPhone.
Choose pictures from your computer in 'Sync Photos' box.
Transfer photos from your computer to iPhone via iPhone Data Transfer
For many iPhone users who want to transfer photos from their computer to iPhone without iTunes, iPhone Data Transfer will be sufficient. With a simple interface, it offers abundant features that can let you directly drag and drop your photos from PC to iPhone, iPhone to PC and even iPhone to iPhone.
iPhone Data Transfer is super quick and safe, and it's also suited for other iOS and macOS devices. You can apply it on your macOS device if you want to import photos from your Mac to iPhone or iPad, and vice versa.
Launch iPhone Data Transfer on your computer. And connect your iPhone to it using a USB cable. If there pops up a warning box on your iPhone screen asking whether you trust this computer, tap 'Trust' to get your iPhone fully connected.
It will identify your device automatically when your phone is connected.
Step 2: Click 'Photos' from the sidebar
Then, click 'Photos' from the left sidebar. All the photos in your iPhone Photo Library will display in front of you.
You can also delete the pics you don't like by clicking the rubbish button at the top of the box.
Step 3: Add photos you want to transfer
Next, hit '+' icon at the top, and select the photos you want to transfer to your iPhone. You can choose either 'Add Files' or 'Add Folder'. If you want to import more pics at the same time, press 'Ctrl' on your keyboard while selecting photos or pic folders on your computer.
The syncing process is usually finished in seconds, and you can find the added pictures in chronological order when you access to Photo Library on your iPhone. In this way, you can move pictures to your iPhone from PC very quickly without image quality loss.
Video Guide: How to Transfer Photos from PC to iPhone
Import pics to iPhone from PC using iCloud suggested by Apple
Another option to import your pictures is to use the Internet. Since more people now are using cloud storage to save their images, it may be the easiest way to sync your photos to your iPhone from a Windows device.
Mentioning cloud storage, iCloud is definitely the first and a good way to help you with it. With 5G of free storage, it can be a perfect transfer station to import your photos. And it will never take you much effort as long as your iPhone has enabled iCloud feature and is also connected to Internet. Follow the steps:
1. Log in to iCloud with your Apple account which has to be the same ID on your iPhone.
2. Click 'Photos' from the left sidebar. You will enter your iCloud Photos and can have an overview of what you've synced to it.
3. Hit the upload icon in the upper right corner of the page. Then select the photos that you're willing to sync when the picture folder comes into sight.
You can also delete your photos or create a new album from here.
After that, you can check the uploaded photos on your iPhone which will be sorted chronologically in Photo Library.
If your iCloud is short of storage, you can try to sync your photos using Google Photos and store them in the cloud. Every Google user with a Google account has a 15 GB cloud storage for free. Compared with iCloud, it offers much more storage space, which means you can upload much more pictures to it if you've got plenty of photos that need to be transferred. Additionally, you can access your cloud photos on any device on which you're signed into your Google account.
Now, let's see how to sync your pictures by Google Photos:
Log in with your Google account on Google Photos on your computer. If you don't have a Google ID, you will have to create one at the first step.
Click 'Upload' in the upper right corner of the page. And choose 'Computer' from the upload options, which will open a computer folder for you to choose the pics you want.
You can have an overview of all the photos in your Google Photos account.
Next, select the photos you want to sync and click 'Open' to upload the images. The process is usually very quick, but it can depend on the speed of your network and the number of the photos you're uploading.
When it's done, open Google Photos app on your iPhone and sign in with the same Google account. You can simply get the app from Apple App store if you haven't installed it yet.
Then, you can see the pics you've just uploaded are all displayed in order. Feel free to download the pictures from your Google Photos account to your iPhone Photos.
Add photos via Dropbox
Using Dropbox to send your photos is like having an invisible bridge between your computer and iPhone, with the ability to add photos, movies, music and documents to your iPhone by simply copying and pasting your files to Dropbox folder on your computer. Here's how:
Install Dropbox on your computer, which will create a new folder named Dropbox on your hard drive automatically.
Launch it and sign in. The 'Upload' button is very easy to find.
Drag whatever photos or picture files you want and drop them to Dropbox folder. Then they will be uploaded to Dropbox cloud in a few minutes.
All the photos or picture files that you put in Dropbox folder will be synced to Dropbox cloud.
To sync the photos to your iPhone, open Dropbox app on your device and select the photos you'd like to keep on your phone. Then tap the three dots at the top right, and choose 'Save to device' among the options. After that it will be downloaded to your iPhone Photos.
Send photos by email
With so many photo transferring tools and apps available to us, sometimes it's easy to forget how convenient the email is. If you only have a few photos to deliver and don't want to install more apps on your device, email might be a good solution for you to send photos from your computer to your iPhone.
Since your PC and iPhone are both connected to the Internet, you can easily open a browser on your computer and log in to your email account. It's usually effortless to create a new email attached with the pictures that you want to see in your iPhone Photos. Then send the email to yourself from your PC, and receive it on your iPhone. Once done, you can save all the photos to your iPhone Photo Library after downloading the attachment.
Conclusion
This guide offers six ways for you to transfer photos or picture files from your PC to iPhone. Pick a way and follow the steps, you'll get a complete copy of the photos when you access your iPhone Photo Library. And you can also use these methods to transfer your music, videos, movies and other files across different OS.
