Applies to: anyone copying files from their iPhone/iPad (for ease I will call these iDevice in this How-To) to a Windows PC
Does not apply to: Anyone wanting to use iCloud to manage their photos. If you are unsure, drop us a question below.
Note: click any of the images below to see the full size version.
There are a few steps you need to follow to move photos from your iDevice to your Windows PC… Here they are with photos:

  1. Make sure your iDevice is turned on AND unlocked (just on the home screen is fine, but not on the lock screen)
  2. Plug your device into your PC (you need a good USB cable ideally, the one the iDevice came with)
  3. Tap “Allow” on your iDevice screen, some models say “Approve” or “Allow Device” or something totally different! But select the “YES” option. On our iDevice the option looks like this:
  4. Then on your PC you should see a folder popup that shows the iDevice. Here is how mine looks for an iPhone:
  5. If this doesn’t show up  you can find it in File Explorer, then look for This PC and Apple iPhone (as highlighted on the left in the screenshot above)
  6. Then double click on the folder called “Internal Storage”
  7. Then Double Click on the one called DCIM.
  8. You might then have two (or more) folders to look in, for me I have one called 100Apple and 100Cloud
  9. Open each in turn until you find the one with the photos you want (for me it was 100Apple)
  10. Highlight the images you want to copy across:
    – CTRL+A on your keyboard will highlight them all
    – CTRL + Click allows you to just click on the ones you want (keep CTRL key pressed down while you click on the ones you want)
    – Click the first one you want press Shift and keep Shift pressed down and click the last one you want and it selects all the ones in the middle.In this example, I have used the CTRL + Click option:
  11. Right click one of the blue highlighted images and press “Copy”   (or if you want to remove them from your iDevice after moving them press “Cut” from the right-hand click menu – warning this will delete them from your iDevice after you move them).
  12. Go to the folder you want to move them to (or make a new folder) I have opted to make a folder in Pictures:
  13. Right click in the folder and press “Paste” This will copy your photos (if you selected Cut above it will move the photos and this is now your only copy of the pictures).
  14. Once they are copied across…
  15. That’s it, they are on your PC  (if you copied them you could then delete them from your iPhone, or if you used the Cut command earlier then they will already have been deleted).

Any questions, comments or thoughts? Drop a note below and we will do our best to help.
Mike 🙂
Top Photo by Nigel Tadyanehondo on Unsplash

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