How Do I Send Pictures From a Windows PC to an iPad or iPhone?

Still, shuttling images back and forth from Windows to an iPhone or iPad isn’t tough. Here are the chief options.

Online storage. Numerous cloud storage repositories including Apple iCloud, Dropbox, Google Photos/Google Drive and Microsoft’s OneDrive are out there, each offering limited storage for free, with tiered subscription plans that depend on how much space you need. You can house your pics online and view them whenever you have an internet connection on your phone, computer, tablet or smart TV, or download them directly to the device to view them whenever.

Keep in mind that you may be sharing cloud storage with videos and other files you may have backed up.

• Choose the ⊞ Start menu, typing iCloud in the search bar.
• Choose the ⊞ Start menu, selecting All > to the right of the word Pinned above a selection of recently used apps, and scroll or search to find iCloud alphabetically.
• Or type iCloud into the 🔍 Search area of the task bar at the bottom of your screen.

2. Select the iCloud App in the Best Match box that pops up on the left side, and then Open on the right side of the box.

3. If you’ve never opened the iCloud app previously, your PC will tell you that it wants to sync iCloud Photos to Microsoft Photos. By choosing the Sync Photos button, you’ll start the process, which has five steps, asking you to sync your:

• iCloud and Microsoft photos
• iCloud Drive to File Explorer
• Passwords to the iCloud Passwords app
• Bookmarks across all your browsers
• Calendars and contacts with Microsoft Outlook

You can choose to opt out of sharing in any of these other areas by clicking the Not Now link, which is a lot less prominent than the button enabling sharing. The syncing starts when you click the Finish Setup button and will take a while.

On the Windows PC, photos are stored in C:\Users\[user name]|Pictures\iCloud Photos\Photos.

4. You can watch the syncing in the box that pops up. And if you click on the View in Microsoft Photos link, you’ll see the photos from your iPhone stored in iCloud, which are now in your Gallery. If you don’t see them initially, click on ≡ Open Navigation in the left rail of the box that opens. Select iCloud Photos to see exactly what you shared.

Because they’re synced, you will be able to see the PC photos on your phone.

USB cable. You can connect a cable to move images across disparate devices. Here’s how Apple instructs you to proceed.

1. Grab the charging cable that came with your iPad or iPhone and connect it to your Windows PC. To connect the iPhone and/or iPad, that cable will either be USB-C or for older models Apple’s proprietary Lightning, which is being phased out. The Windows end will either be a standard USB cable, otherwise known as USB-A, or USB-C, which in recent years has emerged as a de facto standard.

If you don’t have a compatible cable, you may need to purchase an adapter.

2. On your Windows PC, select iPhone or iPad in the sidebar | Files. A list of file-sharing apps appears.

3. Drag a file or files from the PC to an app in the Apple Devices windows, which will begin the transfer process.

4. This method may work best for Phone-to-PC sharing if you have more photos on your iPhone than the amount of iCloud storage you've been given, 5 gigabytes for free, or otherwise purchased.

Email. Emailing photos as an attachment is generally an option, but only if you’re looking to move a few here and there, as I addressed in a previous column. Since you indicated the desire to only move a handful of pictures, emailing in your case is a viable way to go.

Be aware that some email providers, including Google's Gmail, limit the size of email attachments. And if you have mounds of images to move, email is simply not efficient.

Memory cards. Depending on its age, your computer may or may not have a secure digital or SD memory card slot. Few do nowadays. If it does, you can add some of the pictures on the PC to that card.

Of course, since iPads and iPhones do not have slots for such cards, you will need a Lightning or USB card reader accessory to insert memory cards into the handsets. Once you've done so, you will see that pictures on that card are available as an Import option in the Photos app.

Bonus tip: Photo compatibility is rarely a hurdle

Fierce format wars have long been the way of tech, as anyone who recalls VHS vs. Betamax in the mid- to late 1970s can attest. Despite such virtual fisticuffs, the industry also has many kumbaya moments.

So fortunately for all the rivalries among popular tech platforms — Windows, Macs, Android, iOS — each is fluent in the most common file types, which for photos includes the popular .jpg or .jpeg photo standard, among others. And that’s why you can view your pics on pretty much any kind of tech hardware you own.