How do I backup my iphone photos / I hate technology
October 24, 2015 9:52 AM Subscribe
My phone storage is almost full and I have ~1800 photos. I'm trying to back them up and am finding icloud so confusing. Please help me using simple words, I am not up to date on technology.
I have an iphone 5s and it is up to date with all software. I keep getting messages that my icloud storage is full.
I plugged my phone into my computer (running windows) for the first time today and I clicked "download photos" on the box that popped up, and only 311 photos downloaded.
Now - when I try to open an older picture in my phone - more than a few months old - it will be fuzzy and a little white hourglass/pie chart will appear to show that it is being loaded. Then it will become clear. I assumed this meant that these photos are not on my phone, but are on the icloud, and that the 311 photos that downloaded to my PC are the only ones that were actually stored on my phone.
So I'm trying to free up icloud storage as well. I download "icloud for PC" from apple.com and sign in, then I go into the My Computer, Devices and Drives, Icloud photos, and select "download photos and videos". I had three options: 2014, 2015 or all and I chose all.
But now only 666 photos and videos downloaded. I have several blank "2014" folders under "icloud photos" with nothing in them. I also for some reason have two 2015 folders, one has 666 photos/videos and one has 658?
I deleted everything from my phone that is now on my computer.
So then I looked at icloud.com. I have 890 photos on there. It looks like I can individually click on all of them and download to my computer under downloads. Is this the easiest option?
All I wanted to do was plug in my phone and download all of my photos to a folder! Why is this so difficult? What should I have done differently to begin with? Why do all of my photos seem to be stored in different places?
How do I get all of my photos off my phone, off the cloud (since I have no more storage on there) and onto my computer, in one spot?
I have an iphone 5s and it is up to date with all software. I keep getting messages that my icloud storage is full.
I plugged my phone into my computer (running windows) for the first time today and I clicked "download photos" on the box that popped up, and only 311 photos downloaded.
Now - when I try to open an older picture in my phone - more than a few months old - it will be fuzzy and a little white hourglass/pie chart will appear to show that it is being loaded. Then it will become clear. I assumed this meant that these photos are not on my phone, but are on the icloud, and that the 311 photos that downloaded to my PC are the only ones that were actually stored on my phone.
So I'm trying to free up icloud storage as well. I download "icloud for PC" from apple.com and sign in, then I go into the My Computer, Devices and Drives, Icloud photos, and select "download photos and videos". I had three options: 2014, 2015 or all and I chose all.
But now only 666 photos and videos downloaded. I have several blank "2014" folders under "icloud photos" with nothing in them. I also for some reason have two 2015 folders, one has 666 photos/videos and one has 658?
I deleted everything from my phone that is now on my computer.
So then I looked at icloud.com. I have 890 photos on there. It looks like I can individually click on all of them and download to my computer under downloads. Is this the easiest option?
All I wanted to do was plug in my phone and download all of my photos to a folder! Why is this so difficult? What should I have done differently to begin with? Why do all of my photos seem to be stored in different places?
How do I get all of my photos off my phone, off the cloud (since I have no more storage on there) and onto my computer, in one spot?
Dropbox on your phone and computer. It will automatically upload all your photos from your phone and then download them onto your computer (don't bother with the dedicated phone photo app Carosel - it doesn't do anything useful).
posted by Gilgongo at 10:42 AM on October 24, 2015
posted by Gilgongo at 10:42 AM on October 24, 2015
I have an Android phone and all photos are automatically uploaded to Google Drive / Photos and to OneDrive.
OneDrive is a little easier to figure out than Drive, and can be set up to sync automatically with a local folder on your computer so that you can download photos.
posted by Nevin at 10:52 AM on October 24, 2015
OneDrive is a little easier to figure out than Drive, and can be set up to sync automatically with a local folder on your computer so that you can download photos.
posted by Nevin at 10:52 AM on October 24, 2015
iPhone is a little weird about photos. There are two places where photos are kept on the phone -- Camera Roll (where new pictures go) and Photos. Only Camera Roll is accessible when you connect the phone to a computer.
The other photos are kind of like how music is handled -- you can sync and delete them but it's kind of a one-way trip as far as I can tell. It looks like your photos are on iCloud. Don't know much about that myself, you might be able to get them off using iTunes or something.
The Dropbox app mentioned above only uploads your photos from Camera Roll, not the other photos, so it's not going to help here.
(My personal MO is to turn off iCloud and just use iPhoto on a Mac to transfer them off the phone occasionally, then re-sync my iPhoto library to the phone in iTunes afterwards. I don't think that's an option on Windows, unfortunately, although Windows iTunes might use Windows' photo library thing instead. The Dropbox photo uploader works pretty well as a backup against catastrophic device loss, in lieu of iCloud.)
posted by neckro23 at 11:57 AM on October 24, 2015
The other photos are kind of like how music is handled -- you can sync and delete them but it's kind of a one-way trip as far as I can tell. It looks like your photos are on iCloud. Don't know much about that myself, you might be able to get them off using iTunes or something.
The Dropbox app mentioned above only uploads your photos from Camera Roll, not the other photos, so it's not going to help here.
(My personal MO is to turn off iCloud and just use iPhoto on a Mac to transfer them off the phone occasionally, then re-sync my iPhoto library to the phone in iTunes afterwards. I don't think that's an option on Windows, unfortunately, although Windows iTunes might use Windows' photo library thing instead. The Dropbox photo uploader works pretty well as a backup against catastrophic device loss, in lieu of iCloud.)
posted by neckro23 at 11:57 AM on October 24, 2015
I was having problems with this as well and just yesterday "imported" all of my iPhone photos to my windows laptop via Picasa. I plugged my phone into my laptop and followed the Picasa prompts, and it copied everything to a subfolder in "My Photos" folder. I couldn't figure out the iTunes/iCloud thing because I am not an Apple person.
Caveat: I have been declining the Google Photos upgrade box that's been popping up on my laptop for months, so I don't know if Picasa is dead or if Google Photos does it the same way.
posted by Maarika at 12:24 PM on October 24, 2015
Caveat: I have been declining the Google Photos upgrade box that's been popping up on my laptop for months, so I don't know if Picasa is dead or if Google Photos does it the same way.
posted by Maarika at 12:24 PM on October 24, 2015
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posted by radioamy at 10:25 AM on October 24, 2015 [1 favorite]