How To Sync Photos Between Iphone And Mac

How to...

Before you begin

iMazing's Photos tool has been completely rebuilt in 2020. Please make sure you're up to date first. You can update from within iMazing ( iMazing > Check for Updates), or download and install afresh from our website.

Introduction Videos

The videos embedded below showcase iMazing's main photo management features:

Windows Screencast

macOS Screencast

Browsing your Library
1. Library View
2. Selecting Items
3. Detail View
Exporting Photos and Videos
Importing Photos
Deleting Photos and Videos
Backing Up your Photo Library

1. Browsing

Connect your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to your computer and click the Photos icon. iMazing will start loading your photo library straight from your mobile device, and let you browse it while it's still loading thumbnails in the background. If you've already paired your iOS device with iMazing, you can even access your device's photo library via Wi-Fi, no USB connection required.

1.1 Library View

iMazing Photos Library View, With Highlighted and Numbered UI Components

This is the default view iMazing displays once it has loaded your iOS device's photo library. It features the following components:

A. Sidebar

Here, you can select which album or smart album to browse. You can also export entire albums by drag and dropping them to your desktop, or by opening a context menu on an album with a secondary click. Some albums have unique specifcities:

Camera represents the camera roll.
Bursts will display all frames of burst photos (other albums will display the key frame only).
From my Mac albums are albums which you've synced with iTunes or the Finder, or created with iMazing.

B. View Switcher

You can switch between 3 views:

The Moments view displays photos aggregated by location and date.
The Grid View displays photos in a grid, with a floating date range badge.
The Table View displays photos in a table, ideal to see all available fields at a glance and sort by size, size, date or location.

C. Icon Size

Use this slider to adjust the size of icons in the view.

D. Search Bar

iMazing's search bar (top toolbar) is implemented in Photos too. The following fields are indexed and will return search results:

Filename
Moment Title
Title
Description
Keywords

The last 3 fields are generally empty. On macOS, they can be manually entered in the Photos app.

E. Date Range

You can instruct iMazing to only display photos from a specific date range using this control. By default, this range is set to encompass the date of the first and last asset in your device's photo library.

F. Actions

Export, Import and Delete action buttons are available here. If nothing is selected, only the Import action will be enabled.

💡 Drag and drop: most actions can be achieved by drag and dropping items to or from iMazing's window. If you export assets to your desktop in this way, default export settings will be applied. Use the Export button for much finer grained control over what you export.

1.2 Selecting Items

iMazing Photos Library View, Items Selected

To select an item, click on its thumbnail.
To select a range of items, select the first item and hold the shift key while clicking the last item of the desired range.
To add to your selection, hold the command key while selecting new items.
To select all items, use the standard ⌘+A shortcut, or the Edit menu's Select All action.

Actions are applied to selected items only. A selection of items can also be dragged out of iMazing's window for a quick export.

1.3 Detail View

Double click an item (or select it and press the spacebar) to zoom in on it: iMazing Photos Detail View

Navigation

You can navigate without returning to the Library View in the following ways:

Swipe with 2 fingers on the preview image (click and drag with a mouse)
Click on the arrows which appear to the left and right of the preview image when you hover with the pointer in that area
Use the keyboard's left and right arrow keys
Use the carrousel below the preview image: you can click on a thumbnail to jump to it, or swipe on the carrousel with 2 fingers to scrub (click and drag with a mouse)

Full Screen Mode

Double click the preview image to enter full screen mode. You can double click again to exit, or press the escape key. Note that you can still navigate in full screen mode, using the same controls described above.

Assets and Metadata View

To the right of the preview image, you'll find a scrollable view containing any additional assets and metadata available for the current photo or video.

This view is divided in 4 collapsable sections:

The Assets section displays thumbnails of available additional assets for the current item. This section is hidden if there are none.
The General section lists general information about the photo or video.
The Advanced section features metadata about the camera, exposure, depth of field and more
The Location section lists longitude, latitude and elevation, and displays a Google Maps capture of the location which you can double click to open it in Google Maps. This section is hidden if no location data is available.

Additional assets include:

All frames of bursts
Original versions of edited items
Originals of Portrait Mode photos (no bokeh effect)
The photo and video components of Live Photos
Original photo of automatically re-framed pictures (Smart Frame)

Here's a cropped live photo: iMazing Photos Detail View, Various Assets Available Notice that we've selected the original photo (4th thumbnail in the Assets section of the Metadata view here). By default, the edited live photo is displayed, it's the current asset which represents this item in your library.

You can select and export these assets by drag and dropping them to your computer. We'll see in the Export section of this guide how you can bulk export additional assets too.

2. Exporting Photos and Videos

As we mentioned before, any item (including entire albums in the sidebar) can be dragged and dropped to your computer to launch an export operation. For finer grained control over what you export, the Export button in the bottom toolbar is more appropriate: it will display a sheet of options summarizing exported items and letting you decide which assets to include or exclude from your export, as well as offer useful options to structure folders and naming schemes.

Here is what the export options sheet looks like after selecting all items in our test library and clicking Export:

iMazing Photos, Export Options

Options are grouped in 3 sections:

Media Types and Assets

In the first section, you can choose which types of media to export, photos, videos, screenshots, live photos... Additionally, you can pick which extra assets are included:

Video files of Live Photos
Pre-portrait effect originals of Portrait Mode photos
All frames of bursts

Using these options, you can easily export only the video files of live photos, or all portrait mode photos without the original assets, it's up to you.

Folders

The second section is about folder hierarchy:

Create folders for moments will create one folder per moment
Create folders for media types will create one folder per media type

If both options are checked, Media Type folders will be nested in Moments folders as illustrated below:

New York - 2020-03-01
- Photos
- Live Photos
San Jose - 2020-02-10
- Photos
- Videos
- Screenshots

Other Options

Export originals: if checked, iMazing will also export originals of edited photos or videos.
Use original filenames: the filenames used on the device can be quite incoherent. For this reason, iMazing uses its own naming scheme – check this box to stick to the original filenames used by iOS.
Convert HEIC to JPG: check this option and adjust the quality slider if you'd like iMazing to automatically convert images in High Efficiency Format to JPEG.

Once you've configured export options, click Next and choose a target location on your computer or on an external hard drive. iMazing will begin working and report progress in the Operations Window, which will pop open automatically.

3. Importing Photos

To import photos, you can drop image files or folders anywhere in iMazing's Library view. iMazing will prompt you to enter an album name: iMazing Photos, Export Options

All imported albums are listed under the From my Mac section of the sidebar.

You can also import photos by clicking the Import button in the bottom toobar and selecting image files or folders. In both cases, iMazing will prompt you to name your album.

Managing Items in Existing Albums

You can select an existing From my Mac album in the sidebar, and drop new images to add them. You can also select specific images in an album and delete them with the Delete button. Finally, you can delete an entire album by either deleting all images it contains, or deleting the album itself.

⚠ Important: synced albums, whether they are managed by iTunes, the Finder or iMazing, are always listed under the From my Mac section, which is how the iOS Photos app labels them. They cannot be edited on the mobile device itself – this is an iOS restriction that we cannot circumvene.

4. Deleting Photos and Videos

It is only possible to delete photos form the camera roll or from From my Mac albums. Furthermore, deleting from the camera roll cannot be done if iCloud Photo Library is enabled on the iOS device.

To delete from the camera roll, select Camera in the sidebar, then the items you wish to delete, then click the Delete button in the bottom toolbar. iMazing will ask you to unlock your iPhone or iPad – this is necessary for deleting only.

iMazing Photos, Delete Confirmation

Photos deleted in this way do not go to the Recently Deleted album, so make sure you have a backup of your mobile device before proceeding.

⚠ macOS Privacy: since macOS 10.15.3, Apple increased the security protecting access to connected digital cameras. When deleting photos from your iPhone's camera roll, macOS considers the phone as a digital camera and will prompt you to authorize iMazing to access your Photo library and external volumes. iMazing will not access your Mac's photo library, but you still must give this authorization in order for iMazing to be allowed by macOS to delete photos from a connected iPhone or iPad.

5. Backing Up your Photo Library

Your iPhone or iPad's photo library is fully included in standard iMazing, iTunes or Finder backups, there is no extra step to take. That said, if you use iCloud Photo Library and have enabled the Optimise Storage setting, some photos and videos will be in iCloud and not on your device, nor in your local backup. You can always connect to your iCloud.com account and retrieve images from there.

Recovering Photos from a Backup

You can browse your photo library from any backup in the exact same way as you browse the photo library of a live device. Learn how to browse backups in iMazing.

If you have iMazing style backups, you can jump in the past to any snapshot of your backup and easily recover deleted photos from there, as illustrated in this screenshot:

iMazing Photos Section, Deleted Photos in Backup

Here, we're browsing the Recently Deleted album of a 90 day old backup snapshot. That photo was automatically deleted from iCloud and the device since, but is easily recovered thanks to iMazing's Time Machine style backups.