Discover different methods to transfer all photos and videos stored on iPhone to Android smartphone.
That’s it ! You’ve just taken the plunge and ditched your iPhone in favor of a brand new Android smartphone. Before you can take full advantage of it, comes the delicate stage of transferring data from one device to another. Valuable data stored over months or even years on your iPhone can be more or less difficult to transfer to your new Android device.
This is the case, for example, with photos and videos, data considered by many to be the most important. There are several ways to move your photos and videos from one device to another.
1. Transfer data manually from PC
Manually transferring photos and videos from iPhone to Android smartphone can quickly turn into a nightmare. First of all because the logic of organizing the directories in which the images are stored in iOS is difficult to grasp. A global directory called DCIM groups together several sub-directories in which your photos, videos, and screenshots are distributed.
In order for your PC to communicate with the iPhone, you will therefore need to install the latest version of iTunes if it has not already been done.
Download 32-bit iTunes for Windows (Free)
Download 64-bit iTunes for Windows (Free)
From iPhone to PC
To import the photos from iPhone to your Windows PC, click on the Start menu and launch the Photos app. Connect your iPhone to USB, unlock its screen, and press Trust this computer to authorize the PC to access the data on the iPhone.
Then click the Import button, then click From USB device. Select iPhone and wait for Photos to load content from your iPhone.
By default, Photos selects all loaded items. You will be able to see this by checking the number of selected items against the total. If not, click Select All.
To be sure to find all the photos on your iPhone, it is better to import them into a directory of their own. Click Import Settings, then click Change Import Destination. Choose an existing directory or create a new one and save your preferences by clicking Done. Finally, start the import by clicking on Import selected.
From PC to Android smartphone
Transferring photos from iPhone to Android smartphone is then very easy. Connect the Android device to the PC, accept the Use USB to transfer files alert, and click OK.
A Windows file explorer window opens directly to the terminal’s storage location. Explore the directories and choose a location in the storage of the mobile to drag and drop the directory containing the photos from the iPhone.
Your Android smartphone should then do all the work. New photos and videos stored in memory are automatically detected and displayed in the image viewer installed by default on Android, Google Photos in our example.
2. Transfer data manually from Mac
However, handling is not so easy on a Mac. And it goes without saying that if you had an iPhone, chances are you would use a Mac too.
From iPhone to Mac
First, manually upload photos from your iPhone to a macOS directory. You can do this using, for example, the Image Capture utility.
From Mac to Android smartphone
If you’ve just landed on Android, you’ve probably noticed that connecting your new device to your Mac won’t bring it up as a storage device. Whereas Android has been sold to you as an open system to which little or nothing is locked. How to access smartphone folders to manually transfer data to them? Forget the idea of going through the Finder right away.
To access your Android device’s storage from your Mac, you will have no choice but to use a third-party utility: Android File Transfer. Officially offered by Google, the utility allows you to explore the content of your smartphone and to transfer files to it from your Mac.
Download Android File Transfer for macOS (Free)
Once installed on your machine, Android File Transfer works like a file explorer. You can browse the different directories of the device, and access both the internal storage memory and the microSD card, if your device has one. You will then only have to drag and drop the backup directory of photos from iPhone to the memory of Android smartphone.
3. Using Google Photos
Going through Google Photos is undoubtedly the easiest solution. As long as you have a solid connection to the Internet, of course, especially if you need to synchronize several thousand photos for the first time.
For those who are new to Google Photos, this is Google’s photo storage service, which allows you to back up all the photos and videos from your smartphone’s camera roll to the cloud.
On an iPhone, Google Photos can sync all the content on your device with no storage limit. The service backs up all your photos up to 16 megapixels free of charge, and all your videos in Full HD. Once all the photos and videos on your iPhone are synced to Google Photos, all you need to do is connect your Google account to the Google Photos app on Android to find all of your content.
Finally, note that on some Android smartphones, the Google Photos application is the application used by default to display the photos and videos stored in the device.
Download Google Photos for Android (Free)
Download Google Photos for iPhone (Free)
4. Via a Wi-Fi connection and a dedicated application
If you have Wi-Fi at home, which is very likely, it is quite possible to transfer your photos and videos wirelessly. Connect your iPhone and your Android smartphone to the same local network, and download the CopyMyData application on each of the devices.
Download CopyMyData for Android (Free)
Download CopyMyData for iPhone (Free)
This free application offers to use your Wi-Fi connection to transfer your contacts, calendars, photos and videos from one device to another. Open the application simultaneously on the iPhone and on the Android smartphone. Tap Next, then tap To or From Another Device Over WiFi. The two devices should detect each other.
From the Android smartphone, tap the detected iPhone to select it and tap Next. Then choose Copy data from selected device, and press Next. A PIN code is displayed on the iPhone. Enter it on the Android smartphone to authorize the connection between the two devices and tap Next.
From iPhone, select the data you want to transfer from iPhone to Android smartphone and tap Next. The more photos and videos you have to transfer, the longer the transfer time will be. A word of advice, therefore, make sure that both devices are connected to the mains or that their batteries are full.
Once all the data has been transferred to Android, your smartphone should automatically scan the memory and display the photos and videos in the “Gallery” application, in our case, Google Photos.