Ask HN: How to export photos from iPhone to non Mac computers | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to export photos from iPhone to non Mac computers

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OK - I am getting abit stressed in not finding a way to export a large number photos and videos from my iphone 14 to ANY computer that is not running the latest Mac OS or using the cloud. How can I transfer my camera filea to a linux or windows machine? I have tried copying from explorer (failed with “catastrophic failure”) and with itunes (have a backup but no actual files anywhere). Does anyone have a simple solution to do this? Without buying an Apple computer ….

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Had the same issue and wrote a blog article about it. A bit dated but it should still work (Linux):

https://pilabor.com/blog/2022/01/access-and-recover-files-fr...

Thanks. May try your method.

The advantage over an app based method is that you might just use rsync to sync all available files, the disadvantage may be that you might not be able to transfer all extra data (if you organised your stuff in albums etc.).

I use LocalSend to share files between iOS and Linux. I don’t know if it works well for a lot of files. I use the flatpak version on Linux.

Thanks for the tip - will check the app.

If your photos are stored locally, and you're using Windows - you can just plug it in via USB and Windows will recognize it as a camera storage. Your phone will probably prompt you to allow access. Be careful, though, if your photos are stored in iCloud Photo Library - they will be stored locally as smaller versions of themselves, so you won't be getting the originals. If that's the case, use iCloud for Windows and opt in the Photos bit. You can then copy the originals from there. It's slow but it works.

I tried most of these apps, LANdrop was the best so far, and also it reserves the original image with no compression or changing meta data.

Edit: I tried it on all platforms, linux, windows, android, and iOS. You would need both connected to the same lan.

Thanks for the tip. Have downloaded the app and will test it out.

I use owl files to transfer to windows 11 over internal wifi

https://www.skyjos.com/owlfiles/

The kicker is you have to create a local user account lusrmgr.msc

then when you share the folder, give that person full permissions and security as specified here

https://www.skyjos.com/owlfiles/help/windows/help_windows.ht...

Linux should be able to port over files over USB, FTP or local lan using apps already mentioned. I think I've previously used Dolphin over USB and FTP (server on iphone) for backups.

FTP? how does that work? is it supported natively or thru an app?

There are free ftp server apps you can download and you access them using any ftp client on Linux.

Yeah? I’ll check them out. If you know of one which is free free then let me know.

AFAICT you should be able to do this with a regular Windows 10 computer.

Docs:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/import-photos-an...

https://support.apple.com/en-us/120267 (see the section Import to your Windows PC)

Seems like I don’t know the magic spell. I’m constantly getting “catastrophic failure” alert boxes when I try to use the explorer window for file transfer. The “import” functionality seems to work but is so slow that I gave up. I cannot have my phone and computer tied up for who knows how long. And it fails if my phones display goes to sleep.

I previously used IOS phone app photosync Worked OK for me

Thanks for the trip but it seems to be trialware.

I would .zip them up and email them as Gmail attachments.

Thats not going to work with >10000 files (~100GB total).

I had a feeling the proposal would get you to reveal what "a large number" was.

We are on HN. Large is large ;)

Can you use iCloud for Windows app?

As I said - I’m not using icloud.

Dropbox works

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