How to Quickly Share Photos and Files Between iPhone and Android Over Wi-Fi

How to Quickly Share Photos and Files Between iPhone and Android Over Wi-Fi

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Direct file sharing between iPhone and Android is still tricky to figure out. How do you quickly transfer a bunch of photos and videos to your friend’s Android without uploading them to an online tool (which requires consuming your mobile data) like WhatsApp or Dropbox? Uploading them to a cloud based storage service requires a good data plan, internet speed, patience and putting up with the disadvantages that come with some of these services (Whatsapp, for instance, resizes the images and videos before uploading).
While all it would have taken is a simple Bluetooth file transfer, Apple loves to set restrictions for what goes in and out of their devices.
Woman holding an iPhone 6 Space Gray with social networking service

But we work really hard to find some amazing workarounds to make file sharing simple for you guys. I am going to show you how you can transfer photos from iPhone to Android and vice versa using Wi-Fi, even when you don’t have a Wi-Fi hotspot around. The idea struck me while I was writing the article on how to transfer photos from computer to iPhone camera roll using FTP. All you need is the right apps to make it work for Android.

Transferring Photos from iPhone to Android

So let’s have a look at how we can make this work by following these simple steps.
Step 1: Make sure both the devices connect to the same Wi-Fi network. If there’s no Wi-Fi network around to connect to, you can tether the Wi-Fi network from Android and connect the iPhone to it. Now download an app called FTP Server on your Android device. This is a simple app that will emulate your SD card as an FTP server. There’s no configuration required, all you need to do is start the server.
Screenshot_2014-12-11-11-52-35
Step 2: Download a free file manager app on your iPhone called the Documents 5. Once you launch the app, you will see your camera roll folder along with some other files manageable by the app. The second tab is the account tab from where you can add external file sharing accounts like FTP or cloud based accounts.
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Document 5 (1)
Step 3: Now configure an FTP account for the server you have started on the Android device and connect both the devices.
Document 5 (2)Document 5 (3)
Step 4: Once the connection is successful, you can now select all the files from the Camera Roll folder that you want to transfer and tap the upload button. Finally, select the folder on the FTP server (the Android phone) and confirm the transfer.
Document 5 (1)Document 5 (4)
So that was how you can transfer photos from your iPhone to any Android device even without a Wi-Fi connection around. And because the trick uses a Wi-Fi network, the transfers are blazing fast.
Cool Tip: You can emulate an FTP server on Windows and transfer your photos to the computer without cables or iTunes. In this way you can also download movies from your computer using the Documents 5 app and watch them without having to sync from iTunes. A real time saver if you ask me.

Conclusion

This trick does require two different apps on your two different devices, but at least it gets the job done quick. Furthermore, you can extend the limits of the utility to transfer photos, videos, and many other files from the Android network. So try it out and do leave a comment about how it worked for you

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