System tower · floor
Before the cable, one question. How to transfer photos from iphone to computer has a straightforward answer and a trap in front of it, and the trap is that the photos you can see on the phone are not necessarily the photos on the phone.
This is the sentence to read before plugging anything in. With iCloud Photos on, the pictures
sitting on the phone may be device-optimised stand-ins rather than the originals — Apple’s own
description is that you can “keep full-resolution originals on each of your devices, or save
space with device-optimized versions instead.” Import in that state and you have copied the
stand-ins.“If you have iCloud Photos turned on, you must download the original, full resolution
versions of your photos to your iPhone or iPad before you import to your PC.”
So the first decision is whether you need to transfer anything at all. Apple’s own framing is that with iCloud Photos “you don’t need to import photos from one device to another” — the library is the same library everywhere — Apple’s phrase is “on all of your Apple devices, on iCloud.com, and even your PC”. That is the answer for somebody who wants their pictures available on a computer. It is not the answer for somebody who wants a folder of files they can put on a drive and hand to somebody, and the difference between those two wishes is worth settling before you start.
The other thing to settle first, if you are turning iCloud Photos on today: “The photos and videos that you keep in iCloud Photos use your iCloud storage. Before you turn on iCloud Photos, make sure that you have enough space in iCloud to store your entire collection.” Apple puts that check before the switch rather than after it.
With that decided, the cable. The two computers want different things.
Cable, then the Photos app. Apple’s sequence: connect, click Allow if asked about the accessory, open Photos, and the Import screen appears — “if the Import screen doesn’t automatically appear, click the device’s name in the Photos sidebar.”
Unlock the phone, tap Trust if it asks, choose an album, then Import Selected or Import All New Photos. The word New is doing work: it skips what is already there.
One step first, and it is the step most instructions still get wrong: “Install the Apple Devices app from the Microsoft Store.” Not iTunes.
Then cable, unlock, Trust — and from there Apple hands you over: it points at Microsoft’s own instructions for importing into the Photos app in Windows.
The Windows line is the one worth repeating, because it has changed and a great many instructions have not. The app Apple names is the Apple Devices app from the Microsoft Store — and after that, Apple does not describe the import itself. It sends you to Microsoft’s instructions for the Photos app in Windows, which is an honest division of labour and also a warning: two companies, two sets of documentation, and the join between them is where an afternoon goes.
The setting that stops the arguments about file formats. Apple, under the heading of
compatibility with Windows: And the exact consequence, in Apple’s words: “From now on, your camera will capture photos
and videos in JPEG and H.264 formats.” Read from now on literally. It changes what
the camera does next; the pictures already on the phone were taken in the old format and stay that
way.
That distinction is easy to walk into twice. Transfer a few hundred photos, find that Windows is unhappy with them, change the camera setting, transfer the same photos again — and get the same files, because the setting was never about those. It governs the camera from that point forward. For pictures already taken, the conversion has to happen somewhere else.
Two more routes Apple names, for two different jobs
The second of those is the quiet recommendation on this floor. Both the Photos routes put your pictures into a photo library, which is excellent if you want to browse them and unhelpful if you want files. Apple names Image Capture in one line and moves on, but for the specific job of getting a folder you can back up, hand over, or drag onto an external disk, it is the tool that does what you asked rather than what the software prefers.
One last practical note, because it stops the process halfway without saying so. The phone will ask to Trust This Computer, and it asks on the phone rather than on the screen you are looking at. A cable connected to a locked phone that has been left face down on the desk looks exactly like a cable that is not working.
The floors below take it four ways: what is actually on the phone, importing to a Mac, importing to a PC, and the routes that give you files rather than a library.
Four ways in.
The question in front of the question. With iCloud Photos on, the phone may be holding smaller stand-ins, and Apple says to fetch the originals first.
Cable, Photos, Import — with two prompts in the way, one of which appears on the phone rather than the computer.
The route that has changed and that most instructions still describe wrongly. One app, from the Microsoft Store, and then a handover to Microsoft’s own documentation.
Both official routes hand your pictures to a photo library. If what you want is a folder to copy onto a drive, there is a different tool for that.
It will not tell you to install iTunes. Apple names the Apple Devices app from the Microsoft Store, and instructions that still say otherwise were written for a different arrangement.
It will not promise that changing the camera format fixes photos you have already taken. Apple’s own wording is “from now on”, and that is the whole limit.
And it will not treat a photo library as the same thing as a folder of files. They are different things to want, and only one route on this floor gives you the second. What holds instead is simple: the warning about downloading originals, the import steps for both computers, the Most Compatible setting and the alternative routes are quoted from Apple’s own documentation, listed below.
Founder and editor of AI Tools Primer, writing from Palermo, Italy. Thirty-five years of taking computers apart, starting with a Commodore 64 — the long version is on the about page.
Something wrong on this page? Write to aitoolsprimer@gmail.com and it gets fixed.
Written on 22 August 2026.
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