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Skyler-B's avatar
Skyler-B
Iron Contributor
Jun 18, 2026

How do I transfer videos from iPhone to Mac using a USB cable?

The bluetooth and airdrop are too slow and unstable when the video size goes bigger. I tried this a couple of times but the transfer was interrupted at the middle. There are more than 100 videos so I...
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WilliamsJohnson's avatar
WilliamsJohnson
Iron Contributor
Jun 18, 2026

Using Photos App is Mac’s native media management program that you can use to transfer videos from iphone to mac using cable, yet it automatically syncs imported footage to iCloud if iCloud Photos is turned on and consumes cloud storage space.

It lets you preview and pick specific videos before import, but it cannot store videos locally only on Mac to save iCloud capacity.

Instructions: Connect your iPhone to Mac via a USB cable, open the Photos app, select your iPhone from the left sidebar, tick the target video files, then click Import Selected to finish copying.

Warning: If iCloud Photos is enabled, every imported video will upload to iCloud storage automatically. If you only want local video storage on your Mac to avoid using iCloud space, use Image Capture instead.

This method cannot complete transfer videos from iphone to mac using cable without cloud sync for users who have iCloud Photos activated, so it is only suitable for users who are fine with cloud media backup.

If you regularly sync all media across Apple devices via iCloud, you can try this method. It relies on cloud synchronization by default, so you should reserve extra iCloud storage beforehand.