How do I transfer videos from iPhone to Mac? iCloud works great, but I don’t want the huge 4k video files on my iPhone. Syching seems redundant. Can a transfer system be automated, as in, every time I connect my phone to the Mac it transfers videos to it? Can the video libraries live on an external SSD instead of the internal drive? In fact, is there a way to seperate videos and photos as they transfer so they end up in different libraries on an external drive?
In short, iCloud works too good, and I don’t need all of the 4k video files chewing up the storage on my phone.
Lastly, what’s the best way to view unedited videos taken on a phone? Is it the photos app? Wasn’t there a videos app at one time?
Storage space is limited on the iPhone. Storage space is limited on the new Mac mini. External SSD space is essentially unlimited. And I literally sit in front of my Mac all day. Using iCloud is great to see my photos on other devices and away from home, but if the transfer functionality exists in such a way as to avoid leaving huge video files on my phone, I don’t mind plugging in the phone. In fact, I use the Mac to charge my phone and update software already. Why not just use the daily manual connection to transfer files rather than going over the network.
And as an aside, I do pay the $0.99 per month for more iCloud space. That’ not a lot of money, but again, it seems unnecessary given how much storage is available on external drives right in front of me.
Device: Mac Running Big Sur
App: Photos
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Erik J.
If you are using iCloud Photos, then every photo or video you take will automatically go across iCloud Photos to your library and your Mac. If you don't want that, then it gets complicated, but you can work it out.
In fact, I skip iCloud for videos I take for work, leaving my iCloud Photo Library only for my real personal photos and videos. The way I do it is to first use a separate app for "work" videos. I usually use ProMovie Recorder + for this. But you could use any app that simply stores videos in its own local storage instead of sending them to your Photos library.
Then I can transfer the videos over to my Mac using either AirDrop or connecting the iPhone and using the Finder (previously iTunes) method of transferring from that's app's files to my Mac.
Doing it automatically isn't really an option. I can't think of any way. But this at least circumvents iCloud for these huge 4K video files.
As for viewing the videos, well if you use a separate app, you would view it in that. But otherwise, Photos is fine for viewing videos. There is a TV app, but you usually don't send raw clips there, only projects you created in iMovie or such. Even then, Photos works fine too.