Easiest Way To Transfer ONLY Photos from Old iPhone to New iPhone

[A4orce84]

Hello Everyone,

I currently have an iPhone XR that I purchased a few months ago because my old iPhone 8 Plus basically died. Died meaning it wouldn't power on, I couldn't connect it to my computer, nothing. I was pretty bummed that I lost all my photos and data on the old iPhone 8 Plus. HOWEVER, I plugged it in and magically the phone turned on and I could access all my old photos and data. I immediately took a backup of the phone and backed it up directly to my MacBook Pro for now.

I do NOT want to restore this recent backup to my new iPhone XR since I have been using it for a few months and already have all my apps / settings correctly setup. I do want to transfer ONLY my photos from my old iPhone 8 Plus to my iPhone XR.

Question:
What is the easiest way I can transfer photos (ONLY!) from my old iPhone 8 Plus to my iPhone XR?

Any feedback / assistance / etc. would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

 

[mikzn]

Have you tried transferring the pictures and videos from your iPhone 8 to "Photos" on your Mac? via USB cable?

Then you will have a usable backup of the all photos on your iPhone 8 and you will able to transfer all the photos or just selected photos to your newer iPhone XR

Also having all the photos downloaded to the Mac is a good way to back up all your photos and take advantage of all the tools for organizing and image modifications?

 

[Cayden]

I agree with mikzn. If you can still get the iPhone 8 working with your MacBook, just transfer the photos into the photos app. Then, you can sync the photos from your photos app back to your XR. If you can’t get the 8 to work with your MacBook anymore, you could always take a backup of your current XR, put the backup from the 8 on the XR, then transfer the photos to your Mac, put the XR backup back on the XR, and then sync the photos from your Mac

 

[A4orce84]

Thanks for the replies guys! I did a bit more research and I actually ended up buying some additional iCloud storage and enabled the iCloud Photos feature. Currently, the old iPhone 8 Plus is chugging away and uploading everything to iCloud as we speak (I have it plugged in and monitoring it closely).

The Plan:
If I understand how iCloud Photos works correctly, once all the photos sync to both my iPhone XR and my MacBook Pro, I should be good with at least having all my photos be on 2 separate devices. At that point, I can disconnect my old iPhone 8 Plus from my AppleID and then if I erase and reset it / it breaks again / blows up in the ocean, it won't matter.

This sound like a decent plan to you guys? Hoping the old iPhone 8 Plus makes it that long....it looks like it's about halfway done with uploading my photos to iCloud currently.

Thanks!

 

[swandy]

Thanks for the replies guys! I did a bit more research and I actually ended up buying some additional iCloud storage and enabled the iCloud Photos feature. Currently, the old iPhone 8 Plus is chugging away and uploading everything to iCloud as we speak (I have it plugged in and monitoring it closely).

The Plan:
If I understand how iCloud Photos works correctly, once all the photos sync to both my iPhone XR and my MacBook Pro, I should be good with at least having all my photos be on 2 separate devices. At that point, I can disconnect my old iPhone 8 Plus from my AppleID and then if I erase and reset it / it breaks again / blows up in the ocean, it won't matter.

This sound like a decent plan to you guys? Hoping the old iPhone 8 Plus makes it that long....it looks like it's about halfway done with uploading my photos to iCloud currently.

Thanks!

I am assuming you are using the Photos app - presumably on your MacBook Pro - to do the upload. In other words adding them to the Photo apps library and then having it upload the photos to iCloud Library. The photos will then - assuming both your iPhone and MacBook Pro share the same Apple ID - be synced to your iPhone 8.
Firstly, iCloud Photo Library is not a true "backup system", it is a syncing system. Meaning any changes you make in the Photos app on either device - and this could mean changes to a photo or a deletion of a photo - will occur on the other device. I have my Photo library on my iMac set to download the originals to the library on my Mac. (Photos Menu, Preferences, iCloud tab, iCloud Photos and make sure "download originals to this Mac" is selected. However, unless you then make a backup of the Photo Library on your MacBook, any deletions will also delete them from the library.
What I do is I backup the Photos library on my Mac (which is actually stored on an external drive) to two other external drives. However, if you accidentally change or delete a photo, and you are past the 30 days that the photos stay in "recently deleted", the only way to get it back is copy back the entire library. Like I said - not a true backup system.

 

[wicked271]

If you don't have a lot of photos, try to upload your photos to the Files app or OneDrive if you have an Office subscription, or also dropbox. I find OneDrive a bit buggy though, I have to keep the app open just for the upload of photos to work.

 

[dk001]

Hello Everyone,

I currently have an iPhone XR that I purchased a few months ago because my old iPhone 8 Plus basically died. Died meaning it wouldn't power on, I couldn't connect it to my computer, nothing. I was pretty bummed that I lost all my photos and data on the old iPhone 8 Plus. HOWEVER, I plugged it in and magically the phone turned on and I could access all my old photos and data. I immediately took a backup of the phone and backed it up directly to my MacBook Pro for now.

I do NOT want to restore this recent backup to my new iPhone XR since I have been using it for a few months and already have all my apps / settings correctly setup. I do want to transfer ONLY my photos from my old iPhone 8 Plus to my iPhone XR.

Question:
What is the easiest way I can transfer photos (ONLY!) from my old iPhone 8 Plus to my iPhone XR?

Any feedback / assistance / etc. would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

If you are on WiFi why not Airdrop them?

 

[mdwsta4]

To bring this thread back rather than post a new one, I think I may be in a similar position to the OP.



I have an iPhone 12 Pro and have been using iphones since the first gen. Over the course of the last 12 or so years, I've jailbroke a number of times back when that was prevalent and have always restored the new phone from a backup. My current 12 pro has roughly 40GB worth of 'data and other' that Apple still won't let people dive into/delete. It is NOT from apps or data within those apps.

What I'd like to do is restore the phone to start off fresh. I can download all the same apps and spend the time getting all the settings how I like them without too much of a hassle. My only hesitancy is dealing with photos. I use a Mac and obviously have the Photos app, but it's the 'Recents' album on my iPhone that I want to keep. That's my go-to view for photos on my phone and it's where I've kept approximately 800 photos over the last 12+ years.

Is there any way I can restore my iPhone and keep photos in the 'recents' album? Is it as simply as enabling iCloud and then syncing iCloud with the fresh phone with my same apple ID?

Any help would be appreciated. If this is poaching the OP's thread too much, mods please feel free to move it.

 

[AnthroMatt]

To bring this thread back rather than post a new one, I think I may be in a similar position to the OP.



I have an iPhone 12 Pro and have been using iphones since the first gen. Over the course of the last 12 or so years, I've jailbroke a number of times back when that was prevalent and have always restored the new phone from a backup. My current 12 pro has roughly 40GB worth of 'data and other' that Apple still won't let people dive into/delete. It is NOT from apps or data within those apps.

What I'd like to do is restore the phone to start off fresh. I can download all the same apps and spend the time getting all the settings how I like them without too much of a hassle. My only hesitancy is dealing with photos. I use a Mac and obviously have the Photos app, but it's the 'Recents' album on my iPhone that I want to keep. That's my go-to view for photos on my phone and it's where I've kept approximately 800 photos over the last 12+ years.

Is there any way I can restore my iPhone and keep photos in the 'recents' album? Is it as simply as enabling iCloud and then syncing iCloud with the fresh phone with my same apple ID?

Any help would be appreciated. If this is poaching the OP's thread too much, mods please feel free to move it.

I believe your plan will work. I just did a full wipe and set up my phone as new last week. Once I signed in to iCloud, all of my photos downloaded to my phone, including the recents folder, which matched the recents folder on my macbook (which had matched the recents folder on my phone before the wipe).

 

[mdwsta4]

Cool, thank you