iPhone to Windows
How to transfer files from an iPhone to a Windows PC without iTunes
You have photos, a video or a document on an iPhone, and you want them on a Windows computer. Apple's answer is to install software and plug in a cable. There is a shorter route that needs neither.
This guide uses Poftim, a web page that connects the two devices directly. Nothing is installed on the iPhone, nothing is installed on the PC, and the files do not pass through a cloud folder on the way. It takes about a minute the first time.
No cable · No iTunes · No account · Works over Wi-Fi or mobile data
Why this is annoying in the first place
The usual routes and what is wrong with each
Every method below works. They are listed because knowing why they are irritating is what makes the alternative make sense.
- A cable and iTunes, or the Apple Devices appSoftware to install, and syncing rather than copying
- The Windows Photos importPhotos and videos only, and the cable has to behave
- iCloud on the webUploads everything first, and needs the storage
- Emailing the files to yourselfAttachment limits stop at around 25 MB
- A messaging appRecompresses photos and video, quietly
- AirDropNot available on Windows at all
The two that hurt most are the last two. A messaging app will happily move a holiday video and hand you back something noticeably worse than the original, because compressing it is the whole point of the app. And AirDrop, which is the tool an iPhone owner reaches for by reflex, simply does not exist outside Apple's hardware.
The method
Five steps, starting on the PC
Start on the Windows PC rather than on the iPhone. The PC shows the code and the iPhone's camera reads it, which is the easy way round — an iPhone camera reads a code on a monitor instantly, and pointing a laptop webcam at a phone screen is fiddly.
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01
Open poftim.app on the Windows PC
Use Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera or Firefox — whichever you already have. Type poftim.app into the address bar. A square black-and-white code appears on the page straight away, with the words Scan or share to connect above it.
Nothing has been created on any server at this point beyond a short-lived session that will expire on its own if you walk away.
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02
Point the iPhone's camera at the screen
Open the ordinary Camera app on the iPhone — not a QR scanner app, the normal camera. Hold it up to the code on the monitor. A banner appears across the top of the camera view offering to open poftim.app. Tap it.
Safari opens the transfer page on the iPhone by itself and the two devices begin connecting. You do not type anything and you do not choose anything.
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03
Check that both screens show the same phrase
Both devices now display the same short phrase. This is not decoration and it is worth two seconds of attention: it is a fingerprint of the encryption key the two devices have just agreed on, in a form a person can compare at a glance.
If the phrases match, press It matches — connect. If they differ, stop and start again — you are not connected to the device you think you are.
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04
Pick the files on the iPhone
On the iPhone, tap Choose files. iOS offers its usual picker: the photo library for photos and videos, or Files for anything else. Select as many as you like — up to five hundred at once — and confirm.
The transfer starts immediately. Keep the page on screen and the iPhone awake while it runs; iOS suspends pages that are not visible, and a suspended page is not sending anything.
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05
Save them on the PC
Each file appears on the PC as it arrives, with a Save button beside it. Once more than three have arrived you also get Save all, which asks you to pick a folder once and then writes every file into it. A name already used in that folder gets a number rather than overwriting anything.
When you are done, close either page. The connection ends for both devices and nothing about it is kept.
What is actually happening
The file does not go up and come back down
This is the part that makes the method feel different from every cloud service you have used. There is no upload step and no download step. There is one step.
The iPhone encrypts each piece of the file before it leaves, and the Windows PC decrypts it on arrival. The keys are agreed between the two devices and are never sent to a server, so nothing in the middle can read what passes through it.
When both devices are on the same Wi-Fi the data usually takes a direct path between them and never leaves the building. When they are on different networks — the iPhone on mobile data, the PC on home broadband — the encrypted stream is passed along by a relay that cannot read it.
Both routes are encrypted end to end, and in both cases the readable file exists only on the two devices. The difference is speed, not privacy. The full security architecture sets out what the service does see — timing, approximate volume and IP addresses — rather than claiming it sees nothing.
When the two devices are not together
Sending to a PC in another room, or another country
Scanning needs the camera and the screen in the same place. When they are not, use the link instead.
On the device showing the code, press Share connection. That produces a one-time link you can send by message, email or any other means. Whoever opens it lands on the transfer page already paired with you, and both ends still show the matching phrase to confirm.
A shared link always routes through the encrypted relay, so neither device has to be reachable from the other's network. That makes it the right choice for sending files to somebody else entirely — a PC at work, a relative's laptop, a colleague on the other side of the world.
The link is single-use and expires on its own. Send it through a channel you trust, and compare the phrase on both screens before you send anything — the phrase is what proves the person who opened your link is the person you meant.
If something goes wrong
The six things that actually go wrong
The iPhone camera does not offer to open the link
Move closer or further from the monitor until the code fills a good part of the frame, and give it a second to focus. If the banner still does not appear, check that code scanning is switched on in the camera settings. A very dim or very bright monitor can also defeat it — change the screen brightness and try again.
The photos arrive as HEIC files that Windows will not open
An iPhone stores photos in HEIC by default and sends exactly the file it holds, because converting it would mean changing your original. Newer versions of Windows open HEIC directly; older ones need the codec from the Microsoft Store. To avoid the format entirely, set the iPhone camera to store new photos in the most compatible format, which is JPEG.
The transfer stops partway through
Almost always the iPhone went to sleep or the page was put in the background. iOS suspends a page that is not on screen and the transfer stops with it. Keep the page visible, and set a longer auto-lock interval before starting a big video. Start again and it runs from the beginning.
The connection will not build at all
Some office, school and guest networks block the traffic a direct browser-to-browser connection needs. The relay usually gets through where a direct route cannot, so simply retrying often works. If the network blocks that too, switching the iPhone to mobile data is the quickest test — if it connects then, the network was the problem.
I opened the link inside another app and it did not work
Tapping a link inside a messaging or social app often opens a stripped-down browser view rather than the real browser, and some of those withhold the capabilities the transfer needs. Use the menu in that view — it has an Open in Safari item — and the page will work normally.
How big a file can I send?
Files are streamed in encrypted pieces rather than loaded into memory in one go, so there is no fixed ceiling to quote. In practice the limits are the two devices, their browsers and the free space on the PC. A multi-gigabyte video is an ordinary case rather than an edge case. Sending large files goes into what to expect.