How to Transfer Photos from iPhone to Windows PC

The Decision Framework: What Matters to You

There's no single best way to get photos from an iPhone to a Windows PC. The right method depends on three things: how many photos you're moving, whether you care about original quality, and how much patience you have for setup.

A quick decision tree:

1. Moving 1-5 photos right now? Email or a messaging app. Zero setup, works immediately.
2. Moving a large batch and want original quality? USB cable or direct WiFi transfer. No compression, no cloud middleman.
3. Want ongoing automatic sync? iCloud for Windows. Requires iCloud storage and setup, but runs in the background.
4. Need cross-platform flexibility beyond just iPhone-to-Windows? A dedicated transfer app like OpenDrop. Works across all your devices, not just this one combination.

I'll walk through each method, including the specific gotchas I've hit, so you can pick the one that fits.

USB Cable: The Reliable Default

Plug your iPhone into your PC with a Lightning or USB-C cable. Unlock the phone. Tap "Trust This Computer" on the popup. Open File Explorer, find the iPhone under "This PC," and browse to DCIM folders.

This works. It always works. It doesn't need WiFi, doesn't need an account, and transfers at USB speeds. For bulk transfers (hundreds or thousands of photos), it's still hard to beat.

The problems are practical, not technical. You need a cable, which means you need the right cable. Lightning-to-USB-A for older PCs, Lightning-to-USB-C or USB-C-to-USB-C for newer ones. If your iPhone is USB-C (iPhone 15 and later), you probably have the cable. If it's Lightning, you might need to dig one out of a drawer.

The DCIM folder structure is also hostile. Photos are organized into subfolders like 100APPLE, 101APPLE, and so on, with filenames like IMG_0001.HEIC. There's no date-based organization, no album structure, no metadata visible in the folder names. If you're looking for specific photos, you're scrolling through hundreds of thumbnails in File Explorer.

HEIC is the other friction point. iPhones shoot in HEIC format by default (High Efficiency Image Coding). Windows 10 and 11 can view HEIC files if you install the HEIF Image Extensions from the Microsoft Store (free), but some older photo editing software doesn't support it. You can change your iPhone to shoot in JPEG (Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible), but HEIC files are about half the size of equivalent JPEGs, so you're trading storage efficiency for compatibility.

Best for: Large one-time transfers where you want original-quality files and don't mind the cable.

iCloud for Windows: When You Already Pay for Storage

Apple's iCloud for Windows app syncs your iCloud Photo Library to a folder on your PC. Install it from the Microsoft Store, sign in with your Apple ID, enable Photos, and your photos start appearing in a local iCloud Photos folder.

The appeal is automation. Take a photo on your iPhone, and it shows up on your PC without any manual steps. For ongoing use, this is convenient.

The downsides are significant. iCloud gives you 5GB free. A modest photo library blows through that in weeks. The paid tiers (50GB for $0.99/month, 200GB for $2.99, 2TB for $9.99) aren't expensive, but you're paying a monthly fee for what's fundamentally a file copy operation. The initial sync of a large library can take hours or days depending on your internet speed, because every photo uploads to Apple's servers and then downloads to your PC.

The iCloud for Windows app has also been notoriously buggy. It's improved over the years, but I've seen it freeze during sync, show incorrect photo counts, and occasionally duplicate files. The sync status indicator sometimes gets stuck on "Downloading..." indefinitely. Force-quitting and restarting usually fixes it, but it's not confidence-inspiring.

There's also a privacy tradeoff. Your photos route through Apple's servers. Apple encrypts iCloud data, but they hold the keys for standard iCloud (not Advanced Data Protection). If you're privacy-conscious about your photo library, uploading everything to a cloud server may not sit well.

Best for: People already paying for iCloud storage who want automatic, always-on photo sync.

Email and Messaging Apps: The Small-Batch Shortcut

Select a few photos in your iPhone's Photos app, tap Share, pick Mail or Messages or WhatsApp. Open the same app or email on your PC, download the attachments. Done.

For 1-5 photos, this really is the fastest option because there's nothing to set up. You already have email. You probably already have a messaging app on both devices.

The limitations are hard. Gmail caps attachments at 25MB. Most messaging apps compress images before sending. WhatsApp compresses photos aggressively, reducing a 12MP iPhone photo from several megabytes to a fraction of that with visible quality loss. iMessage preserves quality between Apple devices but doesn't have a native Windows client.

If you're sending photos for quick viewing, social sharing, or reference, compression doesn't matter. If you need original-resolution files for printing, editing, or archiving, email and messaging apps lose too much quality.

Best for: Sending a handful of photos where original quality doesn't matter.

Direct WiFi Transfer: The Speed Option

This is the method I use daily. Both devices are on the same WiFi network. A transfer app on the phone sends files directly to the PC over the local network. No cable, no cloud, no compression. On LAN, files up to 10GB stream directly.

OpenDrop works by running an HTTP server on the PC (port 8000) and using mDNS discovery (_opendrop._tcp.local.) so the iPhone app finds it automatically. Select photos on the phone, tap send, and they appear in %LOCALAPPDATA%\OpenDrop\Files on the Windows PC. The files transfer at whatever speed your WiFi supports, which on a decent router is fast enough that you'll wonder why you ever used a cable.

HEIC files transfer as-is, at original quality. No conversion, no compression. If your PC can handle HEIC (Windows 10/11 with the free HEIF extension), you get the space savings. If you need JPEGs, OpenDrop Pro includes file conversion that handles the HEIC-to-JPEG step.

The setup takes about two minutes. Download OpenDrop on both devices. Open both apps. They find each other. Start sending. There's no account required for LAN transfers, no pairing process, no configuration. QR code pairing is available as a backup if your network blocks mDNS (some hotel and corporate networks do).

Compared to USB, you lose the absolute maximum transfer speed of a wired connection but gain the convenience of not needing a cable. Compared to iCloud, you skip the cloud round-trip and monthly fees. The tradeoff is that transfers are manual (you choose what to send each time) rather than automatic.

Best for: Regular photo transfers where you want original quality, speed, and no cables or cloud dependencies.

Which Method to Pick

Here's how I'd score each method on the factors that actually matter:

Speed of first transfer (including any setup time):

1. Email/messaging (zero setup, send immediately)
2. USB cable (plug in, browse, copy)
3. WiFi transfer app (2-minute install, then fast transfers)
4. iCloud (install app, sign in, wait for initial sync)

Speed of ongoing transfers:

1. iCloud (automatic, no action needed)
2. WiFi transfer app (open app, select, send)
3. USB cable (find cable, plug in, browse, copy)
4. Email/messaging (select, share, open on PC, download)

Photo quality preservation:

1. USB cable (original files, always)
2. WiFi transfer app (original files)
3. iCloud (original if "Download Originals" is enabled)
4. Email/messaging (compressed by most services)

Works without internet:

1. USB cable (always works)
2. WiFi transfer app on LAN (local network only)
3. Email/messaging (needs internet)
4. iCloud (needs internet)

My personal workflow: I use OpenDrop for nearly everything because I transfer photos between my iPhone 15 and Windows desktop several times a week. The WiFi transfer takes seconds for a batch of photos, preserves HEIC quality, and doesn't require me to find a cable or pay for cloud storage. For the rare case where I need to dump my entire camera roll (thousands of photos), I'll plug in with USB-C because raw throughput wins at that scale.

Pick the method that matches your typical transfer. If you only do it once a year, USB is fine. If you do it weekly, invest the two minutes to set up a WiFi transfer app. If you want it fully automatic and don't mind paying Apple, iCloud works. There's no wrong answer, just answers that fit different workflows better.