Organise iPhone photos to Mac without cloud service

[eastwoodandy]

Hi, is there any way to maintain and transfer albums to my Mac which were created on my iPhone? E.g. I’ve manually added an album on my iPhone and moved photos in there. How do I get that album and its photos onto the Photos app on my Mac, without using a cloud service?

Is there a way to transfer the album and photos via USB?

I don’t subscribe to iCloud and I really don’t want to start.

Thanks

 

[eastwoodandy]

Hi, is there any way to maintain and transfer albums to my Mac which were created on my iPhone? E.g. I’ve manually added an album on my iPhone and moved photos in there. How do I get that album and its photos onto the Photos app on my Mac, without using a cloud service?

Is there a way to transfer the album and photos via USB?

I don’t subscribe to iCloud and I really don’t want to start.

Thanks

Think I’ve found the solution, will try later

https://www.macobserver.com/tips/quick-tip/photos-import-to-specific-album/

 

[Kimcha]

Unfortunately it’s not a solution. This allows you to import photos to an album in macos photos, but it doesn’t allow you to select photos in an album on your iPhone.

The same problem exists for importing favorites.

It’s absurd that Apple doesn’t allow this.

One solution is to select the photos in an album on the iPhone and then airdrop it...

BUT if you airdrop to a Mac it doesn’t send the live portion of the photo. So you have to airdrop to an iOS device that has no photos in the camera roll and then import from there.

It’s a nightmare.

Another promising solution is iMazing. It allows to import albums, but again it doesn’t import the Live Photo portions...

 

[eastwoodandy]

Unfortunately it’s not a solution. This allows you to import photos to an album in macos photos, but it doesn’t allow you to select photos in an album on your iPhone.

The same problem exists for importing favorites.

It’s absurd that Apple doesn’t allow this.

One solution is to select the photos in an album on the iPhone and then airdrop it...

BUT if you airdrop to a Mac it doesn’t send the live portion of the photo. So you have to airdrop to an iOS device that has no photos in the camera roll and then import from there.

It’s a nightmare.

Another promising solution is iMazing. It allows to import albums, but again it doesn’t import the Live Photo portions...

Thanks, this is so annoying!

I might experiment using the free Dropbox and iCloud options to see how that goes.

Google has suggested some Mac/iphone apps but none of them are completely free.

 

[Kimcha]

iCloud is the only good solution, but it doesn’t work if you want to avoid the cloud for privacy reasons.

Dropbox and apps don’t get access to the raw files I think. So if you import some photos by uploading them to Dropbox and import them to the photos app, it won’t recognize them as “already imported” when you connect the iPhone.

 

[eastwoodandy]

iCloud is the only good solution, but it doesn’t work if you want to avoid the cloud for privacy reasons.

Dropbox and apps don’t get access to the raw files I think. So if you import some photos by uploading them to Dropbox and import them to the photos app, it won’t recognize them as “already imported” when you connect the iPhone.

Thanks, good point about Dropbox. I’m less concerned with iCloud privacy and more about whether I can manage on the free 5GB. I would resent having to pay just to get a feature I would expect for free over a wired connection.

 

[yellow8]

Basically iCloud Photos Library does all of this automatically for you.
Unfortunately, this costs quite a lot of money, but saves you the time.