Transfer photos to and from anything with PhotoSync

With PhotoSync, all your devices can share with each other. iPhone to Mac? Check. PC to iPhone? Check. Android phone to iPad? Check. iPhone to iPhone? Android tablet to Mac? Mac to iPad? Android phone to Android phone? Check. Check. Check. Check.

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Starting our fourth decade: Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously online since 1983

How to transfer photos and videos to and from anything -- from PC to iPhone, Android to Mac, PC to iPad, iPhone to iPad, Android to Android, and much more

March 15, 2015

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2015, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2015, The Post-Standard

The No. 1 question people ask me about the iPhone -- besides how to turn off the blasted autocorrect -- is how to send photos and videos from their iPhone to a computer. Or vice versa.

In fact, it's the same question I get about the iPad. About Android phones, too. And Android tablets.

With all this interest and even frustration about such a seemingly simple task, you'd think someone would have come up with a simple way to do it.

And someone has. It's been around a long time. And just about nobody knows about it.

It's called PhotoSync. It's an app for iPhones, iPads and Android devices. It's got a free companion program for PCs and Macs. It works anywhere you have a Wi-Fi signal. And it doesn't cost much. You have absolutely no reason to be without it.

With PhotoSync, all your devices can share with each other. iPhone to Mac? Check. PC to iPhone? Check. Android phone to iPad? Check. iPhone to iPhone? Android tablet to Mac? Mac to iPad? Android phone to Android phone? Check. Check. Check. Check.

The "traditional" (ahem, slow and outmoded) way of sharing photos among your devices is by emailing them. That's fine for an occasional picture or two, but what it you don't have email on all of your devices? What if you have hundreds of photos you want to transfer? What if the stuff you want to send back and forth includes videos? (Try sending a 10-minute video by email!)

PhotoSync, just $1.99 from the Apple and Google app stores, solves all these problems. As an iPad photo enthusiast, I use it probably twice a week. My iPad holds only so much -- it obeys the Hall Closet Rule, which says "Anything that can be filled up will be, in half the time" -- so I'm always shunting some of my iPad photos over to my Mac or PC, where they can be stored on backup drives.

PhotoSync solves another problem, too. I've got a slew of Android photo-editing apps that I love to play with, and there's no better way to get photos onto one of my Android tablets than PhotoSync. And, lest I forget, the last time Nancy came home from a day at the zoo she had 160 new photos on her Android phone. PhotoSync zipped them over to our storage drives quickly.

Alas, nothing is foolproof. There are other, less capable apps also called PhotoSync, none worth your time. Get the real deal. Go to the PhotoSync website and let it guide you to the app. It's at www.photosync-app.com.

(Oh, sorry. You can turn off autocorrect in the Settings App under General, then Keyboard.)