How to access your iPhone Camera Roll on Mac or PC

Whether you have a Mac or a PC, you can use your computer to access your iPhone or iPad’s Camera Roll/entire Photos library for easy photo and video transfer. In this tutorial, we show you the easiest way to access your iOS device’s Camera Roll on both operating systems.

iPhone, MacBook, and an iMac kept on a desk — Photo by Devon Janse van Rensburg on Unsplash

Access your iPhone or iPad Photos on Mac

Follow these steps to access your iPhone or iPad’s Camera Roll on your Mac:

Connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac using a Lightning or USB-C cable as appropriate.
If prompted on the iOS device to trust the computer, tap the Trust button, and enter your device passcode.
Launch the Image Capture app from your Applications folder. You might not know about this app, but it’s a free one that comes pre-installed with your Mac.
Click your iPhone or iPad from the app’s sidebar, and you should now see all your photos and videos here.

Next, you can select, move, and delete photos and videos from your Camera Roll with ease. You can also use the Import All button to transfer everything from your iOS device to your Mac in one click or select just some images and import them. Note that this method doesn’t let you add photos to your Camera Roll.

Besides Image Capture, if you use iCloud Photos on your iPhone and Mac, you can access your entire photo library on these devices.

Access your iPhone or iPad photos on Windows PC

Windows users will find it’s easy to view their iOS device’s Camera Roll on the computer too, and it can be done by following these steps:

1) Connect your iPhone or iPad to your PC with the appropriate Lightning or USB-C cable.

2) If prompted to trust the computer you’re connecting to, tap the Trust button and enter your iPhone or iPad passcode.

3) Open a Windows Explorer window.

4) Click the Apple iPhone or Apple iPad option from the sidebar.

5) Double-click the Internal Storage folder.

6) Double-click the DCIM folder.

7) Double-click the 100Apple folder.

8) You can now view the contents of your iOS device’s Camera Roll.

From this window, you can easily drag contents out of your device’s Camera Roll and onto your computer. You can also delete items that you no longer want on your iPhone. Unfortunately, this method doesn’t allow you to add images to your Camera Roll.

Besides that, you can also use the Photos app on Windows to see your iPhone photos and transfer them to your PC. Microsoft has an easy tutorial showing the same.

And that’s all there is to it. Whether you’re on a Mac or a PC, you can easily access all the photos and videos stored on your iPhone’s non-removable flash storage.

Have you used either of these methods to access your Camera Roll on your computer before?

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