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Populus

macrumors 601
Original poster
Aug 24, 2012
4,840
7,135
Spain, Europe
Hello, I didn’t know if this post should be in the iOS sub-forum or in the macOS Catalina subforum. It involves copying all of my iPhone (iOS 12) photos into the Mac with macOS Catalina. I don’t want to do any synchronization or iCloud backup. I just want to import the raw photos on my iPhone on my Mac to be able to format my iPhone 8.

I’d like my pictures to retain the HEIF format because that way they keep the quality at a much lower file size. AND to retain that same format when I copy the pictures back to my iPhone 8 from my Mac once I’ve finished the installation of iOS 13 on my iPhone.

Should I use Airdrop massively with all my photos? Should I somehow drag and drop them? Should I copy all my photos to the Photos App? I don’t use iCloud Photo Library both for privacy and space reasons (It wouldn’t be enough with the 5GB of free storage).

What’s the best way to import all my pictures from my iPhone 8 to my Mac, in order to be able to restore them to my iPhone later, retaining all the quality?

Thank you.

BONUS QUESTION: Is there a way to tag photos on iOS/macOS Photos app? Because I have thousands of pictures sorted by date, and it is pretty much impossible to find one that might be just a few weeks or months older. Having key words to tag them could be neat.
 
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