Here are five ways to share photos and videos from your iPhone, which could be sending them to a friend or family member, or it could be sending it to your computer.
AirDrop
AirDrop is Apple's wireless transfer between iPhones, iPads, and Macs. It doesn't use cellular data, it doesn't compress anything, and it's fast. For iPhone-to-iPhone and iPhone-to-Mac, it's the right option when both people are standing in the same room or at least in the same house.
Open the photo or video, tap the share icon, tap AirDrop, and pick the device. A prompt appears on the receiving end asking whether to accept, and once they tap Accept the file lands at full quality.
AirDrop has three visibility settings — Receiving Off, Contacts Only, and Everyone for 10 Minutes. If you're trying to send something to someone who isn't in your contacts and their phone is set to Contacts Only, their device won't show up in your list. Have them open Control Center, long-press the network tile, tap AirDrop, and switch it to Everyone for 10 Minutes. The setting reverts automatically after the timer runs out, so they don't have to remember to change it back.
AirDrop only works between Apple devices. If the recipient is on Android or Windows, skip to one of the other methods.
Text message
Texting a photo is the obvious move, and it's fine as long as you understand what happens to the file on the way.
If both people are on iPhones, the message goes over iMessage (blue bubbles), and the photo arrives at close to full resolution. Videos take a little longer to send but the quality holds up.
If the other person is on Android, the message goes over SMS/MMS (green bubbles), and the carrier compresses the file on the way. A photo that looked crisp on your screen arrives grainy and small. A video arrives short, blurry, and often cut off, because carriers cap MMS attachments at a few megabytes — a 30-second 4K video is well past that limit, so the carrier squeezes it down to something it will carry.
Blue bubble to blue bubble, texting is fine for a few photos. Green bubble, assume the quality is going to suffer, especially for video.
Email works the same way as text in terms of quality, because the original file gets attached and sent. Mail even asks what size you want to send the photo at: Small, Medium, Large, or Actual Size. Choose Actual Size to send the full-resolution original, which is worth doing when the recipient needs the detail rather than just a preview.
Most email providers cap attachments at around 25 MB, which is enough for a single 4K photo but not for a 2-minute 4K video, which can run 300 MB or more and will bounce back or get rejected before it reaches the recipient.
For big videos, Mail on the iPhone will offer to send them through Mail Drop, which uploads the file to iCloud and sends a download link instead. The link expires after 30 days, so for one or two videos that's enough time, but if you're sending a large batch on a regular basis, iCloud Shared Albums handles that more cleanly.
Plug it into a computer
When you need to move hundreds of photos and videos off the phone — end of a vacation, end of the year, running low on storage — the cable is still the fastest way to do it.
On a Mac, plug the iPhone in, unlock it, and tap Trust when it asks. The iPhone shows up in the Photos app sidebar, so click Import All New Items and let it run. Image Capture is another option if you want the files without pulling them into the Photos library.
On a PC, plug the iPhone in, unlock it, tap Trust, and open the Photos app in Windows. Click Import, pick the iPhone, and let it run through the transfer. Large imports can take a while if the phone hasn't been backed up to a computer recently.
Newer iPhones save photos in a format called HEIC, which is smaller than JPEG but not everything can read it. The Windows Photos import sometimes skips HEIC files or imports them as broken. If you're seeing missing photos after an import, go into the iPhone's Settings → Camera → Formats and switch from High Efficiency to Most Compatible, and new photos will save as JPEG, which Windows handles without issue.
iCloud Photos and shared albums
If you have family members who want to see every photo you take without you having to send anything, iCloud Shared Albums is the set-it-and-forget-it option. You create an album, invite people by email or phone number, and anything you add shows up on their devices automatically. It works for Android and Windows too, and those recipients get a web link rather than a native app view.
iCloud Photos itself is a different feature. That one syncs your entire photo library to iCloud and down to any other Apple device you're signed in on. If your computer is a Mac and you're already signed into the same Apple ID, every photo you take on the phone shows up in Photos on the Mac without you doing anything.
The free tier of iCloud is only 5 GB, which fills up fast. The 50 GB plan is 99 cents a month and is enough for most people.
Which method for which situation
- Standing next to the person, both on iPhone or Mac: AirDrop.
- A few photos to someone on iPhone: text message.
- A few photos to someone on Android: email at Actual Size, or a shared album.
- One big video to anyone: email with Mail Drop, or upload to a shared album.
- Hundreds of photos onto a computer: plug in the cable.
- Family who wants to see everything automatically: iCloud Shared Album.
None of these are hard once you've done them a couple of times. The problem is picking the wrong method and then fighting it on top of fighting the file size.
Leave a comment