How to Transfer Photos from Windows PC to iPhone or iPad
Do you want to transfer photos that are stored on your Windows computer to an iPhone or iPad? Many of us capture some memorable photos using a professional camera and store them on the computer for later use, but if you want to access them on your mobile device, you’ll need to first move them to your iPhone or iPad using iTunes for Windows.
Apple’s iTunes is a media and device management software that’s used to sync content with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch using a wired or wireless connection. It’s something PC Apple users have gotten accustomed to over time, though the app has been phased out on the Mac.
Are you interested in figuring out how syncing photos from Windows to iPhone or iPad works, so you can try it for yourself on your iOS device? Perfect, because in this article, we’ll be discussing exactly how you can transfer photos from Windows PC to your iPhone or iPad.
Remember this is transferring pictures from a Windows PC to an iPhone or iPad, not the other way around. If you want to learn how to transfer photos from iPhone to Windows 10 for PC you can read that here, which uses a different process that does not require iTunes.
How to Transfer Photos from Windows PC to iPhone or iPad Using iTunes
If you haven’t synced your device with iTunes before, you won’t be able to take advantage of the iTunes Wi-Fi sync feature and instead rely on a wired connection. First of all, make sure you’ve installed the latest version of iTunes on your computer before going ahead with the procedure. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the necessary steps.
- Connect the iPhone or iPad to your Windows computer using the included USB to Lightning cable and open “iTunes” on your computer.
- Click on the iPhone or iPad icon, which is located right next to the Music tab as shown in the screenshot below.
- Now, head over to the “Photos” section under Settings in the left pane and check the box right next to “Sync Photos”.
- Here, you’ll notice that iTunes displays a folder that it copies photos from. If your photos aren’t stored in that location, simply click on the folder name and select “Choose folder”. This action will open Windows Explorer.
- Select the location where the photos you want to transfer are stored and click “Select Folder”. Now, simply click “Apply” in iTunes as shown below.
- Now, iTunes will initiate the syncing process and start backing up data on your iPhone first. Depending on the photo count and device storage, It’ll take a few minutes to complete the sync.
That’s pretty much all there is to the syncing process.
Now, if you head over to the Photos app on your iPhone or iPad, you’ll be able to access all the photos you chose to sync.
That being said, using a wired connection to transfer content between your iOS and iPadOS device and PC is gradually becoming a thing of the past.
If don’t want to rely on your USB to Lightning cable to transfer content, you might want to enable Wi-Fi sync in iTunes to sync data wirelessly. However, for this to work, both your PC and iPhone / iPad must be connected to the same Wi-Fi network.
With services like iCloud, Dropbox, and Google Drive, you don’t need to use iTunes to transfer photos and videos anymore.
If you’ve set up iCloud on your Windows PC, you can easily sync all locally stored photos with iCloud and access them on any Apple device that’s logged into the same iCloud account within a matter of seconds. On the other hand, if you’re using a Mac, your pictures get automatically synced across your iPhone and iPad with iCloud.
Did you manage to transfer all your photos to your iPhone and iPad by syncing it with iTunes? What do you think of this wired procedure to transfer content between your devices? Are you planning to switch to a wireless solution like iCloud for transferring media in the near future? Do let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments section down below.
The problem with this is that the process seems to insist on backing up the Ipad, which I do not want to do.
And I hate the whole concept of “syncing” in the Apple world – it never specifically says in which direction you are doing the syncing which can lead to all sorts of grief. My brother-in-law was once trying to add content to his ipod and was forced to “sync” his ipod with his PC – and he lost ALL of the music content on his ipod. Also there is some mention of losing all the current content on the ipad.
All I want to do is copy all of my photos from my PC to the ipad (which has masses of space available), a one time event that should not be rocket science. There are about 20GB of photos so I want to do this as fast as possible – maybe just set and leave it for several hours. So I do not want to be uploading all these photos to the internet and then downloading them to the ipad. And I do not want to backing up the ipad.
This is a very frustrating exercise which should not require the purchase of special software for a one time event. All of the so called freeware solution only give a very limited number of photos before they force you to buy their software.
I have now finished my rant so can somebody give me a reasonable solution to what, on the surface seems a simple task
I have an iPhone X and win 10 . Both on the latest OS version. I have 10000 on the PC all in relevant folders. I sync them to my IPhone and the result was 10000 images all in one Album. I have no idea why or how to correct it . Any ideas ?
Very weirdly, because I have the up-to-date version of iTunes, there is nothing about Photos on it. Thus, no way to get a photo to Photos on the iPad. I even tried emailing it to myself, but it downloads into Files and I can’t see how to get it to Photos, an Instagram can’t see it in Files.
However, using the article on how to get photos from the iPad to my computer, everything went smoothly (apart from repeatedly telling me it couldn’t be done, and not bothering to say–because it’s already done!). So thank you muchly for that.
Syncing to iTunes at the best of times is a right faff. I copy photos to an SD card and use the Apple SD adapter. For me it’s much easier.
I have a large number of photos on my PC that I would like to transfer to my iMac. Can I use the cloud? If so how can I prevent the photos from going to my iPhone or iPad as they do not have enough memory. I still would like photos from my iPhone and iPad to go to the cloud then to my iMac automatically.
Thanks
would that also remove photos as well?
most syncing with an iphone or any app will clear the previous data like songs, etc.
i hope i am wrong, and will try this on my Dell XPS because the macbook air GB is getting filled up.
I tried plugging my iPhone 5s into my Dell XPS and iTunes said that an upgrade was needed, but there is no software update option in windows iTunes, huh?
You can get the update from the Microsoft store.