Sharing mobile photos to desktop

[boyse7en]

I'm trying to move some photos from my Android phone (a Poco M4 Pro) to my desktop computer (Mac Studio)

Simplest method seemed to be via Bluetooth, so i have paired my phone and the Mac, opened Google Photos and selected the photo I wanted and then shared it via bluetooth. So far, so good.

But it whirrs for a couple of seconds and then says "File transfer unsuccessful", but doesn't give me any more info than that.

Any idea what i might have done wrong? Seems simple but evidently isn't.

[zedx19]

If you have Google Photos, why not upload to Google Photos, then go to the Google Photos website on your desktop?

Or plug your phone into the desktop via USB, then browse the folder the photos are saved within (usually DCIM).

[paulrockliffe]

There are lots of options but I'm not sure any of them are perfect. I've ended up installing NextCloud on my server and setting up auto-sync of my photos to that, then that's set as a Network location on my PC. I used to use Google Photos, but I setup NextCloud to backup my Wife's photos so I figured I might as well use it too

[boyse7en]

zedx19 said:

If you have Google Photos, why not upload to Google Photos, then go to the Google Photos website on your desktop?

It's my work desktop, so i'm logged into Google with my work account, not my personal account

zedx19 said:

Or plug your phone into the desktop via USB, then browse the folder the photos are saved within (usually DCIM).

You need to install an Android app to get data off the phone and I haven't got install permissions

[boyse7en]

paulrockliffe said:

There are lots of options but I'm not sure any of them are perfect. I've ended up installing NextCloud on my server and setting up auto-sync of my photos to that, then that's set as a Network location on my PC. I used to use Google Photos, but I setup NextCloud to backup my Wife's photos so I figured I might as well use it too

Thanks for the suggestion but it seems a bit overkill just to move two pictures from phone to computer
It's no something i want to do regularly, it's just a one-off.


In the end I just emailed them to my work account, but it just seemed a bit clunky when everything else seems so seamless these days

[deckster]

boyse7en said:

zedx19 said:

If you have Google Photos, why not upload to Google Photos, then go to the Google Photos website on your desktop?

It's my work desktop, so i'm logged into Google with my work account, not my personal account

Share the photos with your work Google account.

Or open an incognito window and log in with your personal account.

[the-norseman]

deckster said:

Share the photos with your work Google account.

Or open an incognito window and log in with your personal account.

Yep do either of these.

[untakenname]

boyse7en said:

You need to install an Android app to get data off the phone and I haven't got install permissions

You don't need an app if you connect the cable and then slide down the phone options and select share files rather than the default which is just charge.

[LordGrover]

boyse7en said:

I'm trying to move some photos from my Android phone (a Poco M4 Pro) to my desktop computer (Mac Studio)

Simplest method seemed to be via Bluetooth, so i have paired my phone and the Mac, opened Google Photos and selected the photo I wanted and then shared it via bluetooth. So far, so good.

But it whirrs for a couple of seconds and then says "File transfer unsuccessful", but doesn't give me any more info than that.

Any idea what i might have done wrong? Seems simple but evidently isn't.

I'm not surprised, and quite pleased it's not doing what you're expecting... you need permission to write to the computer, which you've not allowed. It would be very dangerous if it simply copied a file.

I don't know how/what to do to achieve what you want though.

Now that you've paired them, can you initiate the transfer from the computer? Can you see your mobile in finder?

[OutInTheShed]

2 photos, I would just email them.

1200 photos, I installed an android app called Wifi file transfer.

[Corso Marche]

boyse7en said:

It's my work desktop, so i'm logged into Google with my work account, not my personal account

The undoubted correct answer here for speed and simplicity was to open G Photos on the phone, select the 2 chosen photos, and then choose to share them with your work account. 2 seconds maximum.
At which point you then just click on G Photos from the app menu of your work account and the 2 photos would be under the Sharing option.

[The Goat]

boyse7en said:

I'm trying to move some photos from my Android phone (a Poco M4 Pro) to my desktop computer (Mac Studio)

Simplest method seemed to be via Bluetooth, so i have paired my phone and the Mac, opened Google Photos and selected the photo I wanted and then shared it via bluetooth. So far, so good.

But it whirrs for a couple of seconds and then says "File transfer unsuccessful", but doesn't give me any more info than that.

Any idea what i might have done wrong? Seems simple but evidently isn't.

This may be different as you're using a mac but on my Windows 10 pc when I want to bluetooth an image from my mobile I have to click the bluetooth icon on my pc & tell it to receive a file before I send it from my mobile otherwise it will fail.

[Actual]

It used to be that Google Drive could be used to sync camera photos on your Android mobile to a Windows computer but Google dropped this functionality.

The sync can be done using Microsoft OneDrive. If you install OneDrive on both your Windows computer and your Android mobile and enable Camera Upload then all your camera photos will be uploaded to One Drive cloud storage and they can then be accessed from your Windows computer using file explorer. I find this very handy.

[thebraketester]

OutInTheShed said:

2 photos, I would just email them.

1200 photos, I installed an android app called Wifi file transfer.

Exactly. Email!!

[boyse7en]

thebraketester said:

OutInTheShed said:

2 photos, I would just email them.

1200 photos, I installed an android app called Wifi file transfer.

Exactly. Email!!

That's what i did.


I worked out how to do it in the end.
Once the computer and phone are paired in Bluetooth, you need to open System Preferences, Sharing and tick the Bluetooth sharing box.

Once you have done that it is a simple process on the phone to open Google Photos, select photo(s), click share, click bluetooth, click on the computer name to share with, wait about 5 seconds and it appears in the downloads folder. Job done.