iOS 14 ruined Photo Transferring (Windows 10)

Still having trouble transferring your photos to PC? Try this:

1. From the iPhones "Settings" App, scroll down and open the "Photos" settings.
2. Scroll down to the very last setting labeled "TRANSFER TO MAC OR PC". (this seems to be where the problem is)
3. Change the setting from "Keep Originals" to "Automatic"
4. After you are sure the check mark is next to the "Automatic" setting you can back out of the page.
5. Just incase you can scroll back up to the "Display & Brightness" settings and temporarily change the screen lock to "NEVER".
6. Now connect the phone to the computer via USB like you normally would.
7. Here you may have to open Windows Explorer and Right Click on the APPLE iPhone icon to select "Import Photos & Video" manually.
8. Now your phone will ask for permission to allow the computer access to the files. Select "Allow".
9. You should see the familiar "Import Photos...." box on your monitor and be free to organize, chose, import and even erase your files with out the phone denying access every few seconds.
10. When you are ready, click "Import" and the process should continue uninterrupted until complete.

Hope this helps. I successfully completed the task several times now using this method. Good Luck.

I spent FOUR HOURS on the phone with Apple tech support regarding this issue, about two weeks ago. I have an iPhone 11 with the latest iOS update. I did everything he suggested. In the end, he gave up and admitted that there is no actual fix or workaround at this time. The things tried:

All the basics - cables, USB ports, drivers, etc.

Updating my version of Windows on 3 different machines.

Rebooting the phone and PC at the same time while connected.

Changing photo settings, file types, iCloud settings, and so on.

Installing the latest version of iTunes on all 3 machines.

...and several other things.

My issue is the same as listed by others. Windows Photo will occasionally see the phone via usb, and may transfer up to 3 random pictures, but then errors out. This is after several YEARS of successfully transferring photos in this way. The ONLY change was the iOS 14 update. If I take photos on my old iPhone 6Plus, running iOS 11-ish, it still works like a champ - Every. Single. Time.

Of course, iTunes is useless for photos: you can upload them from the PC to the phone, but not from the phone to the PC. I didn’t even know this until the support guy told me.

The tech support guy’s admission was very concerning - Apple knows it’s an issue and has no intention of fixing it. Considering that I use my phone for taking tons of pictures at work that have to be transferred to my work PC, this is a huge deal for me. For the first time ever, I’m considering a switch to Android - which I hate - but if Apple is going so far as to lock down even photos, then I guess I’m done.

This is almost as disappointing to me as all the canned responses on using Windows Photo and downloading photos from iCloud and checking your USB port and cable and so on. Linking/copying this same thing over and over does not fix the issue. It just shows that you’re not paying attention to the problem.

Hi!

Before you give up on your iPhone with iOS 14, recommend taking a look at the workaround 87 Model6 posted on 3 Feb 2021. I was just as frustrated as you but their recommendation helped me work around in Windows. BTW, Windows photo app changed their method of importing photos, too. They used to place photos in the Pictures folder inside a subfolder with the date photos were taken. Now Windows just imports everything to the root Pictures folder.

Anyway, here's the suggestion from 87 Model6 that helped me immensely. Skip to #6 to solve importing photos into Windows PC. All instructions above #6 help change HEIC (highly compressed Apple format) photos to .jpg when importing.

1. From the iPhones "Settings" App, scroll down and open the "Photos" settings.
2. Scroll down to the very last setting labeled "TRANSFER TO MAC OR PC". (this seems to be where the problem is)
3. Change the setting from "Keep Originals" to "Automatic"
4. After you are sure the check mark is next to the "Automatic" setting you can back out of the page.
5. Just incase you can scroll back up to the "Display & Brightness" settings and temporarily change the screen lock to "NEVER".
6. Now connect the phone to the computer via USB like you normally would.
7. Here you may have to open Windows Explorer and Right Click on the APPLE iPhone icon to select "Import Photos & Video" manually.
8. Now your phone will ask for permission to allow the computer access to the files. Select "Allow".
9. You should see the familiar "Import Photos...." box on your monitor and be free to organize, chose, import and even erase your files with out the phone denying access every few seconds.
10. When you are ready, click "Import" and the process should continue uninterrupted until complete.

Hi,

1. just disable Icloud for photos , go to setting -photos- off the icloud Photos , just slide it to left to make it off
2. if it still not work do a complete restore with latest ios ipsw file but don't forget to backup first
3. remove itune completely and uninstall with like revo uninstaller , reboot install again
4. restore backup and do the step 1 , it will surely work
5. if u need icloud photo or video files you can download from icloud because it will ask to delete from iphone . but later files accessible as usual like earlier

I was able to fix this by going to settings- camera- format and selecting

Most compatible.

The HEIC format the pictures are defaulted to is what’s causing them not to be able to be downloaded to my windows PC

Heather4444 wrote:

I was able to fix this by going to settings- camera- format and selecting

Most compatible.

The HEIC format the pictures are defaulted to is what’s causing them not to be able to be downloaded to my windows PC

That, and the fact that either your version of windows is not updated to support the newer HEIC standard or you didn’t use apple’s recommended way of transferring photos that automatically converts HEIC to JPG on platforms that don’t support HEIC/HEIF

Workarounds/Options:

• Sync your photos to iCloud: Settings/[your name]/iCloud - Photos ON
• Once it is on and has had time to sync, go to https://icloud.com/photos, where you can view and download them
• OR, get iCloud for Windows from the Microsoft Store to either view or download them
• Use a 3rd party app to sync them. All of these are available for the iPhone: Google Photos, Shutterfly, Dropbox, Box.com, many others. All of them sync automatically once installed.

See also—>Transfer photos and videos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

Exactly same as me. Even tried using the Apple version of iTunes rather than from the Microsoft store, the 32 bit version, etc. So in the end I just grabbed this software called CopyTrans (paid for it) and so happy with it. Can copy from my phone or the iTunes backups (which is the only way to go back and select which backup you want to choose from I guess as iTunes now only restores from the latest. I think it is despicable that Apple are doing this (not fixing the problem that is) and obviously because they want to get people to pay for their cloud storage. I almost switched to Samsung before and still use that phone from time to time (on another countries SIM). So, I guess I'll practice up finally wean myself off this crappy iphone system.

It honestly sounds like Apple wants everybody to use iCloud services. Apple has been moving into the services category for a while. Hardware is no longer their main focus. I’m having the same problem right now on iOS 14.2.1 with an iPhone 12 pro. I’m using Windows 10. iTunes does not have any function for file sharing and there is no dragon drop feature and I cannot find a single way to transfer anything from the computer to the phone. I am using Windows 10 iCloud drive and photos sync app.

So what I want to do is move several files over to the phone for ease of use but the only way to really do that is to use the windows app to hopefully upload the information and files from the PC to the cloud and then download from the cloud to the phone.

Android got that part of they are operating system correct. Drag and drop the phone is a flash drive. Apple of course is locked down so being an android user for 10 years this is pretty frustrating as a relatively new iPhone user.

So, I totally agree, something went wrong in the IOS 14. I followed a few steps in the following link, up to the part where I turned off “Find my phone”. https://youtu.be/U33WmPqX76w I tried to shift and reset, but nothing came up. I am not sure if it was the IPhone back up, the ITunes back up, or turning off “Fine my Phone”. However, before the reset I tried opening my phone folder and I saw the DCIM, and all of the photo folders, I could transfer them smoothly. Sort of, the video files all were dated and time stamped with the date I did the transfer (yesterday), which kind of sucks. I am glad I can now do what I please with my photos. I have Google Photos and ICloud, and neither of them allow me freedom to do what I want, and all of them have a stupid bright white background!

This just happened to me, I'm so sad that I lost all of my recordings.

Let my pain be a warning for others. FYI: By default, iOS records videos using hevc (format compression). When you move or copy the .mov files to your Windows PC using the lightning cable and Windows Explorer, iOS automatically converts the videos to h.264 (more compatible format compression). This conversion is time consuming, lossy, less efficient (requires more storage than hevc) and worst of all BUGGY! Since I "moved" and not "copied" the videos from my iPhone, all of my videos are now ruined (video and audio compression artifacts and missing frames). The only way for me to have avoided this issue is if I enabled iCloud photos and then downloaded the videos from there (screenshot below). Using lightning cable on Windows forces a conversion. Losing all these videos sucks. I am surprised Apple has a bug with hevc to h264 conversion.

That didnt work for me. What I found out was it was EDITED photos. Not all edited photos tho. I transferred like 12,000 photos And less than 20 caused an error. So I put pics in order of file type. Did each file type at a time until i came across a group that wouldn't transfer Then I did that group one at a time. It was still annoying but sped up the process somewhat. It also helps if you have a computer with USB 3.0. (Macrooki said on July 10 it was Live photos. I never thought about that. I never use Live Photos but sometimes I do by accident. I'm going to test this theory. I will reply back when I find out

I have the same problem , I noticed that still pics will download to my pc with no issues while live pics will not download , I tried copy live pic to still some worked , I hope that help

The top reply here is what worked for me. Using the windows photos app easily copies all the pictures & videos into your pictures folder using the same name folders that are on the iphone in DCIM folder. Before finding this out I was also trying to copy over to an external drive directly from the the DCIM folder in windows. Alot of files copied over but I kept getting that error that device is detached/unreachable (something like that). And the files that got copied over seem to be corrupted. Trying to open these files would take forever, many wouldn't open at all and would even cause windows to crash. After several crashes & restarts my whole windows was botched. Tried doing a system restore & my laptop wouldn't even boot up anymore. Had to spend a whole week taking my laptop apart to recover the files & getting my windows, programs & files back in place. I would never again attempt to copy files directly in windows but will now use the windows photos app which does the job no problem.

Before updating to the latest iOS 14 as told on your post what was your earlier iOS version. Then you can look into the iOS changes that has happened between the earlier version on your iPhone and this new version that you have updated now. 

This will give you a broader idea of the issue, if it is directly linked to the iOS version or is triggered by something else.