Looking to get photos off an iPhone, iPad, or Android phone and onto your Mac, without using cloud storage or the Photos app? You’d be forgiven if, after plugging one of those devices into your computer, you though doing so wasn’t possible without resorting to third party software, but it is. You just need to fire up a little application called Image Capture, which you can find in the Applications folder on your Mac.
I was recently trying to import photos from multiple devices after a vacation—an iPhone, an Android phone, and an iPad. I don’t have a paid iCloud subscription, so using that was out of the question (and in any case, iCloud isn’t supported on Android). But all of those devices, as well as traditional digital cameras, are supported by Image Capture.
Just launch Image Capture on your computer and plug in your phone or tablet—you should see it appear in the sidebar. You may need to unlock the device if you’re using an iPhone or enable USB file sharing if you’re using an Android device. That finished, you can then simply select which photos you want to grab.
By default, the application will put everything in the Mac;s Photos app, but that’s not mandatory—you can choose to import them to a folder on your computer instead. Just click the Import To drop-down and choose where you want to put the photos. There are a few pre-set folders, or you can click Other to choose any folder on your device.
Credit: Justin Pot
You can optionally set Image Capture to delete photos from your phone after the import process is complete, which can be useful when you’re running out of storage space. And there’s a button for quick rotations, though no other editing features—you’ll have to handle all that after the import is complete.
As simple as it is, this is a tool I was really happy to find already installed on my machine. The Android support is particularly notable, because it meant I didn’t need to install any third party software in order to grab my photos. Give it a try the next time you’re bringing together photos from multiple devices.