10 Ways To Transfer Files Or Photos Between Mac, iPhone and iPad

You have many options when it comes to transferring files between your Mac and iOS devices. You can keep it simple with AirDrop or iCloud Drive, or use a cable or Wi-Fi to move files, regular networking, the Finder, and more.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at different ways to transfer files between your Mac and your iPhone or iPad. 
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So there are many ways to transfer files between Macs and iPhones and iPads. Some of those options work just for photos. But most of them work for any kind of file. Let's start off with AirDrop. So AirDrop is a quick way to transfer a file between devices. They both don't have to be your devices. One could be, say, your iPhone and another could be someone else's iPhone, iMac, or iPad. AirDrop works between devices regardless of whether or not you own them both. How AirDrop works really depends on if you own both devices. In other words if they are using the same Apple ID. There are, of course, more steps involved if it is somebody else's device you are transferring to or from. 
So here on my Mac I'm going to first, in the Finder, go to AirDrop. You may also find it listed here under Favorites. Now this brings up AirDrop and shows you nearby AirDrop devices. So you might see a whole bunch here. Then at the bottom pay careful attention to Allow Me to be discovered by, and then you've got No One which basically turns it off, Contacts Only so the person you're communicating with has to be in your Contacts. That's their Apple ID in your Contacts. Or Everyone, so anybody so it really doesn't matter. You could switch between these really easily. So if you need to do a transfer really quick you can switch to Everyone, do the transfer, and then easily switch back to No One afterwards. 
Now if the idea is to transfer something from your iPhone to your Mac you can do that in a variety of different apps. For instance, in any app like Photos you can select a photo like this one, Share it, and then you could see one of the options here is AirDrop. Here you could see the device appears there. Tap this and then you'll see a transfer. Notice how it didn't even ask for permission there because it knew that both the devices have the same Apple ID. It was me sending a file to myself. So I didn't need to give myself permission. But if this was somebody else's Mac it would have asked them to accept.
Now the equivalent to the Finder on the iPhone is the Files App. Here you could see On My iPhone, which is local files. You could go in there and usually you will find folders for different apps. So what you're going to see here varies. But you could also create your own folders and store your own things in here. Live apps allow you to save things anywhere you want. So, for instance, if I go into Numbers here I do have a Numbers file. I can tap and Hold that file and you can see one of the options here is to Share. I can Share using AirDrop and select here and you can see the file transfer over. 
Now if I wanted to go from my Mac to the iPhone all I need to do is Drag and Drop something to the iPhone here in the Finder. So I'm going to drag from this other window right into here. You could see it transfers and I get this little prompt here asking what I want to do with it. Since it is an RTF file it's going to offer me to open up in Pages and other apps that accept RTF files or I can just say I want it to go to the Files App. You could see it's going to ask me where to Save it. So I can determine where to do that. For instance I could go into this Docs folder that I created. Save it there. It will show me the file. Let's go back into Browse here and up to My iPhone in Docs and you could see that the file is now there. 
Now perhaps the easiest way to transfer files between your devices is just to use iCloud. Then you see the same files across those devices. So, for instance, here on my Mac, I'm in my Projects Folder. If I Command click here I could see Projects is in my Documents which is in iCloud Drive. So that being the case if I go over to my iPhone and I look in iCloud Drive in the Files App I could see that same Documents Folder. I could go down to Projects and I'll see the same files right here. If I wanted to transfer files to my Mac I could just put it in any folder that's in iCloud Drive and find it in that same location on my Mac and vice versa. 
Another way to transfer files is to simply use a cable. If you connect your Mac with a cable then you should see it here in the Finder Sidebar. Under Locations there's my phone. It will appear here. I have all these Tabs here at the top. One of them is Files. If I go to Files I'll see Files stored here. If I look in Numbers, for instance, I'll see that exact same file that's in here in the Files App under On My iPhone you can see Docs and Numbers and there it is. So this will show files stored by Apps. You can actually see more apps here than I will see in the Files App. Some apps actually have their own kind of private storage space. For instance, I like to use ProMovie here to record videos. If I go back up here to this level I don't see that app listed here. But it does have its own private storage space. If I expand this I can see the files that are stored there. So I can record a video using this App. You can do the same with a lot of photo apps as well. Then access the files it stores right here in the Finder under the Files tab for this device. To transfer something you just drag and drop it like that. You could also transfer something in using that. Of course, whether the app knows how to deal with the file you just gave it is another matter. 
Note that you can also go here to General and then select Show This iPhone When On Wi-Fi. If you do that, and from this point on you should be able to do the same thing just over Wi-Fi and not have to connect your phone with cable. 
With your phone connected either with Wi-Fi or the cable you should be able to go to Photos and then from there you should be able to select your device here on the left and then import any photos. This is the same camera import option that has been around since the very beginning of the Photos or iPhoto App and iPhones and even cameras before that. 
If you want to skip the Photos App and take something directly from your iPhone and store it as a file you can run the Image Capture App which is on your Mac. Select your phone there and then you should see Photos and Videos you've taken with your iPhone and be able to drag and drop them from your iPhone right to your Mac. 
Of course if you're using iCloud Photos then the Photos App on your Mac and the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad should be in sync all the time. Any new photos you take with your iPhone should appear across all your devices. Any photos you import from another camera, say on your Mac, should then appear on your iPhone. There's no need to ever connect your iPhone with a cable or Wi-Fi, use Image Capture, or the Photos app to ever import photos. It should all happen automatically even when you're not in the same location with all your devices. It just happens through iCloud.
Now you could also just use plain old fashioned network file sharing. So here I am in System Preferences on a Mac and you can go into Sharing. Then here you can turn on File Sharing. You can see I have that turned on. Now on my iPhone if I go into the Files App and I go up here, Connect to Server, I can enter in here the information that I see right here. Then connect. Then I can select Guest or Registered User. Since this is my account I know the name and password. Then Next. Then it will connect and there are all my files. There's my Home folder. There's the Documents folder. I can get to all of that. I can transfer files to and from here right on my device. So I can go, for instance, into the Projects folder here. I can click and hold there and I can Copy or I can Move. If I Move then I get to select where it is it goes to. You could also do Drag and Drop. You could actually use two-fingers. You can take one and tap and hold and then start dragging. Then use the other one to navigate all while dragging. Then go back up. Go to On My iPhone. Let's go into here and I'll drop it. I've just taken the file from my Mac and put it on my iPhone. Likewise you could do the same thing here and drag and then put it on your Mac. I'll just take it right here and say this folder. Now on my Mac if I look here under MacMost there's that test.rtf.
Now another thing that you could do is attach an external drive to your iPhone and transfer files there. We used to call that sneaker net where you transfer to a drive and then take it to the other machine and attach the drive there. So you can do a variety of different things with this. On an iPhone of course you have a lightening connector so you're going to want an adapter that either goes to USB and then you can use the USB drive like a flash drive or larger external drive. Or I just have a SD card reader here that goes to lightening and I put a SD card in. Then I can transfer files to this SD card. It appears here in the Files App. So I can go into the card. You can see that this one is used for a camera here but I can transfer files just the same way I showed doing it before by drag and drop or copy or paste or if I've got this connected and I'm going something with an app I can actually choose to save it here if the app let's me save it anywhere in the Files App hierarchy. Of course I can take this card and put it in my Mac or SD card reader and attach it to my Mac and then transfer the file from there. The same thing if I'm using a flash drive or even a larger drive. The great thing is that all the newest iPads use USBC which means that a lot of the flash drives and hard drives now are USBC and you can plug one of those right into the iPad and transfer files to or from the iPad and to and from the Mac using an external drive or SD card or something as a go between.
Now I showed you, of course, how you can use iCloud Drive to do this so easily. But iCloud Drive isn't the only cloud service out there. A variety of other services like DropBox and GoggleDrive and such, if you install them on your iPhone then they will appear in the Files App. So you have two ways to access your files there. Usually through the app itself, like the DropBox app, and in the Files App. So you can move files from different locations in your Files App into, say, DropBox, GoggleDrive, or whatever and then see them on your Mac if you're using the same Cloud Service there.
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 10 Responses to “10 Ways To Transfer Files Or Photos Between Mac, iPhone and iPad”

Bjørnar Huse

3 years ago

To access a VPN company drive you need to install a file manager, for instance FileBrowser.
Now copy the files you need down from the VPN server to your iPad. Remember to upload again when you’re done

William Taylor

I have a Mac 21 High Sierra 10.13.6 desktop and an iPhone 8 and I opened Air drop on both devices and they don't seem to see each other. How can I hook them together to transfer pictures?

Gary Rosenzweig

William: Perhaps your devices are too old? If you are still on High Sierra and an iPhone 8 then it could be the case.

Alston Ray

2 years ago

Hi Gary,
Just learning about Airdrop and successfully transferred two documents (Pages and rtf) from Mac to iPad. Heard the confirmation ping but on the iPad cannot find the documents. Opened Pages and tried a search without success. Any ideas?

Alston: Look in the files app in the Downloads folder. If it isn't there try searching by name in the Files app.

Hi Gary, I have retried sending both files, but still no sign of either file in the Downloads folder. Transfers to and from the photos apps are successful. A real mystery !

Alston: Did you try searching?

Yes...

Bert Mullemeister

Hi Gary, I can now successfully see items from my iPhone and iPad that are on my iMac thanks to this article so thanks .

Is it possible to view things on my iPad on my iPhone. I have some files on my iPad that I do not want to store on iCloud

Bert: No. You would put them in iCloud Drive if you want to do that.

Comments Closed.

10 Ways To Transfer Files Or Photos Between Mac, iPhone and iPad

Comments: 10 Responses to “10 Ways To Transfer Files Or Photos Between Mac, iPhone and iPad”

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