Hands-On Tech 257 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:00]:
Coming up on Hands-On Tech, let's take a look at the process of transferring iPhone photos to a Windows PC. Stay tuned. Hello and welcome to Hands-On Tech. I am Micah Sargent, and today we are taking a look at, I feel, a very interesting question, one that you may have come across before or one that you may have heard about. And so let's take a look at what we've got here. So we have a question in from Wayne who writes, my wife wanted to copy the pictures and some of the mistaken movies to her PC. 1,088 items there were, and she was told that 8 items couldn't be copied.
Mikah Sargent [00:00:49]:
I have no idea what those items are, but in checking on the items that were copied, about half do not have a visible image, either JPEG or MOV. Many of those seem to have a size that is comparable to those that are visible. Some of the files are small, less than 500 kilobytes. Those don't seem to have a visible image. Is there a gizmo that anyone can recommend that can copy pictures off of an iPhone? I've seen ads on such a gadget, but I was skeptical of its viability. Do you have any advice? Is this Apple not playing nice with Microsoft, vice versa, or some of each? All right, so there's the question and here is the answer. First and foremost, I want to just discourage the use of a gizmo for this. It doesn't require a gizmo.
Mikah Sargent [00:01:38]:
It doesn't require a gadget. There are some out there. Some of them are fine, but really you don't need any of this extra stuff to make this happen. Um, you ask, is Apple not playing nice with Microsoft, vice versa, or some of each? This isn't about being deliberately difficult. It's just a formatting issue. And it depends on how old your Windows system is, uh, what tools you've installed for it, what iPhone you're— I mean, there's a lot that goes on here. So, First and foremost, we need to understand what your phone is doing by default in order to better understand why your Windows machine might not be showing you what you would expect. Because modern iPhones have changed the format for media that is captured on the device for the sake of storage saving.
Mikah Sargent [00:02:26]:
These, as we get bigger and better cameras and bigger and better video capture devices, these files in order to have all of the detail, all of the, the HDR recording, all of the, um, you know, 4K footage, the, the giant megapixel photos, it requires a lot of storage space. So Apple and others looked at means of reducing the size of a file while keeping all of the necessary information to have that higher quality. And so iPhones shoot photos in, uh, what's called HEIF, H-E-I-F or H-E-I-C format. And then videos are in HEVC. HEVC, and you don't really need to know what all of that entails, but the idea is that it's a really efficient way of storing an image or a video and still, again, preserving all the detail. So they are going to take up less space, but there are some Windows machines that may not know what to do with these files out of the box. And so it could be with those sort of more reasonable file size images that The data is there, but Windows is not able to show it. So, uh, there are some things that you can do regarding that that we'll get to, but I want to talk about those small files, the ones under 500K.
Mikah Sargent [00:03:51]:
If they're not showing up, then it could be that those files are kind of like leftover cruft. Sometimes they're thumbnail previews or what are called sidecar files, and those can stay in there and still, uh, kind of seem as though they're taking up space and needing to be transferred, but in fact they don't need to be. It's most likely that that's what these files are. So sidecar files, by the way, are kind of like metadata that goes along with the photo. And depending on how you export a photo, particularly one that is a live photo, there may be some sidecar files that go along with that. The 8 items that flat out refused to copy, I mean, honestly, that could be files that were syncing between iCloud. And your phone. It could be that they were locked.
Mikah Sargent [00:04:44]:
There are loads of reasons why that file, those 8 files are not copying over. And it's been my experience that those files tend to be nothing that I actually needed and were instead just little bits of cruft. So I think the most important thing that we can do here is make sure that iCloud is fully synced by going into your iCloud settings and choosing sync, and then going through the photos to the best of your ability and kind of looking for anything that might be missing. And if you don't see anything missing, it's probably fine. And those are probably just little files, but let's move along to talk about our fixes here. Before you go and get any gizmos or gadgets, there's, there are a couple of little tools that you can get from the Microsoft Store, the HEIF image extensions tool and the HEVC HEVC Video Extensions Tool. These installed should help you to be able to see HEAF and HEVC formats on this Windows machine if it's not displaying. Now with modern versions of Windows, Microsoft just as much as every other, you know, tech company out there has gotten on board with the use of HEAF and HEVC content.
Mikah Sargent [00:06:03]:
And so Modern systems should be able to display it. But again, if yours is not, then make sure you have these extensions kind of installed to help the machine render properly what you are trying to see. You can also help to stop this from happening in the first place by going into the settings and changing the way that your photos are exported to other devices. So you can tell the system, no, I don't want these photos to be transferred as HEIF, HEVC. And so there are two options. When you go into your settings app, you go into the photos settings and you scroll down to an option that says transfer to Mac or PC. And there's an automatic option. A keep originals option.
Mikah Sargent [00:07:03]:
And it says underneath automatically transfer photos and videos and excuse me, automatically transfer photos and videos in a compatible format or always transfer the original file without checking for compatibility. So what that's going to do is it's going to sort of look at the system that you have and then based on what it thinks about the system and sort of judging the system, if it can see and display HEVC, HEIF files, then it will under the automatic setting, send those files over in the HEIF, HEVC. If it can't, then it will send them over in JPEG format and H.264 video quality for those transfers. So you will lose a little bit of quality, but it's not a problem for most people if you decide to go with the automatic option versus the keep originals option under that transfer setting. Now we've talked about sort of understanding what is happening here. We've talked about a way to change the file transfer. Let's talk about some other ways of getting these photos off of the iPhone. Yeah, you've probably seen these little USB sticks that you plug in and it's supposed to, uh, automatically back up your photos to this stick.
Mikah Sargent [00:08:21]:
They often have this proprietary software that makes it difficult for you to then move those photos to other places. It can be complicated. Uh, it can be finicky. Finicky. I don't like these tools. There are much easier ways to go about it. Uh, the Windows Photos or Microsoft Photos app on your Windows machine, you can connect the iPhone via USB, you unlock it, uh, you'll see an option that says trust this computer. You tap that in, you, I think, will then end up having to type in your code again and then just use that Windows or Microsoft Photos app to import those photos.
Mikah Sargent [00:08:58]:
Not only is it going to transfer those files over, but it should do do so in a way that is compatible with the machine. You can also use the iCloud for Windows app. If you install iCloud for Windows on the PC, you sign in with your Apple ID, you turn on iCloud Photos, and then it's just going to sync those photos automatically to your machine. You don't have to worry about the cable. Uh, and of course it's free, uh, with your, you know, whatever storage, the storage that you have, that's free. It's free to use and access your iCloud stuff. If you pay for storage. Then you'll get even more access there.
Mikah Sargent [00:09:36]:
Google Photos is also an option. I have talked before about how Google Photos is one of my backup solutions for my photos. So I mostly do my photos library through the Photos app on a Mac, but I also use Google Photos as a backup option, uh, to keep my photos backed up over time. And I've mentioned this before, but Apple recently changed and updated iOS such that the photos apps that we use are able to run in the background and sync photos even whenever we're not in them, which is great because that was one of the issues that we've had in the past with these, these photo saving photo backup solutions that you had to keep the app open in order to do it. The last option, again, another one that I recommend a lot, it's called iMazing. You do get a free trial if you want to try, if you want to see how it would work for you. But it's a paid app after that. And I mean, you can do everything amazing when it comes to transferring files from your machine.
Mikah Sargent [00:10:37]:
So you are, excuse me, from your phone, you would be able to get the photos off. You can even do format conversion right there with iMazing. You can see other stuff that you might want to transfer. And if you're having a lot of issues, this is the place to go because it does just give you so much more access to what you might be after in terms of accessing some of those files that you wouldn't otherwise have. So yeah, I, I 100% recommend iMazing as the most powerful option if that's the way that you choose to go. But let's start with installing the HEIF HEVC extensions on the PC. That's going to make those invisible photos show up, most likely. Change that iPhone's transfer settings to automatic instead of keep originals.
Mikah Sargent [00:11:25]:
And then if you want a solution that's going to keep working, I recommend installing iCloud for Windows and then making sure you have iCloud photo backup turned on on your device. And then it's all there, all ready for you. And then what's great too is that when you have, uh, changes that you make, when your wife makes changes to the photos on our phone, makes edits and things, it's going to sync all of that stuff as well. So it's just a much more elegant solution to the problem. Than simply plugging in some sort of USB stick that you then have to plug in elsewhere to get the photos off or going through this process of kind of moving, moving photos over as if they're files. That's the thing where it's just kind of like, no, we don't really, we don't need to go that way. It's, it's much better to let the photos apps handle the, handle what's going on. So hopefully that answers your question.
Mikah Sargent [00:12:22]:
And of course, as always, Wayne, love to hear what ended up working best for you. All right. Let's take a moment here before we go into our question from Bob, because I want to remind you about Club Twit at twit.tv/clubtwit. When you head there, $10 a month, $120 a year to join the club, you'll gain access to some awesome benefits. You get every single one of our shows ad-free, just the content. You also gain access to our special feeds. We've got a feed that has behind the scenes before the show, after the show. We also have a feed that has our live coverage of tech news events, and you have a feed that has our special club shows like My Crafting Corner, Stacy's Book Club, and so much more.
Mikah Sargent [00:13:09]:
That isn't it though. You also will get access to our members-only Discord, a fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and those of us here at Twit. If all of that sounds good to you, head to twit.tv/clubtwit or. You can scan that QR code in the top corner there to join us, and we look forward to seeing you in the club. All right. I said it was a question. I did mean follow-up. We have follow-up from Bob.
Mikah Sargent [00:13:33]:
Bob wrote in recently asking for help, uh, had like a bunch of, of recipe cards from one of those meal services like Blue Apron or something and wanted to come up with a better way of automatically scanning these— well, well, not automatically, but manually rather scanning these recipe cards, but then letting the rest of the process be automatic to import them into Bob's recipe app of choice. And we talked about a lot of solutions, including using the API of an online tool, an AI tool to be able to properly format the recipe cards and import them into the app. Bob had this to say. Thank you for answering my question on the show. Your information was extremely helpful. The API setup was the key to making this workable. I have the PDF files scanning to a specific folder, which triggers a workflow with ChatGPT. So Bob was able to set it up such that his, uh, whatever scanner he's using, soup, soup, soup, soup, scans in these.
Mikah Sargent [00:14:40]:
And then that's the sound it makes, by the way, scans in these recipe cards, and then they go into a specific folder that is watched. And when the photos, when the scans end up in that folder, then a process takes place where they are properly rendered in the necessary format for them to be imported into his recipe app of choice. Very cool, Bob. Very proud of you. And hope you are loving those recipes. Folks, that is going to bring us to the end of this episode of Hands on Tech. As always, a pleasure to get to, uh, answer your questions. You can email me, hot@twit.tv is how you get in touch, and we look forward to answering your question on a future show.
Mikah Sargent [00:15:29]:
Goodbye, and until next time.
