Three steps, then they're in your gallery.
Plug in your USB-C cable.
Your Mac finds your iPhone over the wire. No Wi-Fi toggling, no hotspot, no "allow local network".
Open PhotoBridge on your iPhone.
Keep it open while transferring, since iOS can't receive photos in the background. If the transfer drops, reopen and it resumes where it left off.
Drag your photos in. Hit Send.
Originals land in Recently Added, editable, favoritable, and optionally dropped straight into a named album.
Fast and lossless. Finally both.
Every other option makes you choose. AirDrop is lossless but slow and flaky. USB tools are fast but dump read-only files you can't edit. PhotoBridge is the only one that's wired-fast and lands originals as real, editable photos.
AirDrop
Drops the Wi-Fi link mid-transfer on big RAW batches. Minutes per shoot, and unpredictable.
iMazing / USB
Quick over a cable, but files land in the locked "From My Mac" album. Not editable, not favoritable.
PhotoBridge
USB-C speed, original bytes, landing in Recently Added, ready to edit, favorite, and post.
Built for people who care about the file.
Lossless originals
Original bytes, never re-encoded. JPEG, HEIC, RAW, MOV and MP4 pass through untouched.
USB-C speed
Wired transfer over the cable, as fast as your cable allows. Far past AirDrop's flaky Wi-Fi.
Lands in Recently Added
Real, editable, favoritable library assets, not the read-only "From My Mac" container other tools leave you.
EXIF preserved
Capture date and GPS travel inside the file, so your timeline and sort order stay correct.
No cloud, no subscription
Direct device-to-device. Nothing uploaded, nothing to pay every month. It just moves your photos.
Optional album
Drop a whole batch straight into a named album on import. Sorted before you even open Photos.
As fast as your cable allows.
PhotoBridge moves bytes at wire speed. The cable is the limit, and the cable in your iPhone box is the slow one. A good USB-3 cable is dramatically faster.
| Setup | Practical link | 200 × 25 MB shoot |
|---|---|---|
| USB-2 cable (the one in the box) | ~200–300 Mbps · ~34 MB/s measured | ~3–4 min |
| USB-3 cable · iPhone 15 Pro+/16 Pro/17 Pro | ~400–800 Mbps | ~1–1.5 min |
| Wi-Fi fallback (no cable) | ~20–60 Mbps | ~10–15 min |
Figures are the practical link. Throughput is bounded by the cable, the disk, and the on-device save, so they're representative, not guarantees. How to tell if your cable is USB-3: the box cable and most charging cables are USB-2; a cable rated "USB 3", "10 Gbps", or sold for external SSDs gets the faster numbers.
The details you'd ask about.
Which formats are supported?
Photos: JPEG, HEIC/HEIF, PNG, TIFF, and RAW: DNG, Canon CR2/CR3, Nikon NEF, Sony ARW, Fuji RAF, plus ORF, RW2, PEF and 3FR. Video: MOV, MP4 and M4V. Files are never re-encoded. What works is whatever your iPhone's Photos app can read.
Are my RAW files really lossless?
Yes. PhotoBridge transfers the original bytes and hands them to your Photos library untouched, verified with a checksum on both ends. Where iOS supports the RAW format, it imports as a RAW asset you can edit.
Where do the photos land, and in what order?
In Recently Added, as normal library assets. Your library sorts by EXIF capture date, which travels inside each file, so capture order is preserved regardless of the order they transfer.
Do I need to keep the iPhone app open?
Yes, during the transfer. iOS doesn't let a normal app receive data in the background, so the receiver has to be on screen. If a transfer is interrupted, just reopen and send again. PhotoBridge only sends the photos that haven't saved yet.
Is anything uploaded to the cloud?
No. The transfer is direct, device-to-device over the cable. Nothing is uploaded, there's no account, and nothing leaves your devices.
What's the iPhone app, and where do I get it?
PhotoBridge is two apps: the Mac sender and a small iPhone receiver. The iPhone app is the required companion, coming to the App Store. The Mac app tells you when it's connected.
How does the trial and license work?
Try it free for 7 days. After that it's a one-time $11.99 license. No subscription, one purchase. Once activated it works offline.
What does it need to run?
macOS 13 or later, on Apple silicon or Intel, plus an iPhone with the companion app and a USB-C cable.
One price. Yours forever.
- Lossless originals into your editable Photos library
- USB-C speed with Wi-Fi fallback
- EXIF preserved · optional album · resume on reconnect
- 7-day free trial, no card to start
macOS
The sender app. macOS 13+, Apple silicon & Intel.
Download for macOS7-day free trial · then $11.99 once
iPhone
The required companion that receives your photos.
Coming soon to theApp Store