Your Phone for Windows 10 Can Now Save Photos Directly to PC

A new update to Windows 10’s Your Phone app lets you save your smartphone-based photos directly to the PC.

Sometimes it really is the little things.

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“We added a handy option to the right-click menu for photos in the Your Phone app,” Microsoft’s Analy Otero Diaz tweeted yesterday. “In addition to [the] Copy and Share [options] you can now save a photo directly into your PC!”

As you may know, the Your Phone app provides useful integration functionality between your Windows 10-based PC and (today, mostly Android-based) smartphone. Key among that functionality is the ability to view your 25 most recently-taken smartphone photos.

Until now, saving a photo from your phone to your PC was a bit tedious: You could copy and paste to a photo-editing app like Paint, or view a photo in the Photos app and then access a “Save as” function from the See more menu. But now you can simply right-click a photo thumbnail in Your Phone and choose “Save as” from the context menu that appears.

Nice!

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Conversation 23 comments

  • Scott Ross

    03 May, 2019 - 11:27 am

    <p>Almost as nice as that $500 bottle of Scotch</p>

  • glenn8878

    03 May, 2019 - 12:05 pm

    <p>I thought it could always do it because of the bluetooth feature. When you link your iPhone to the PC, it should be able to sync via iTunes or directly on the the PC. Therefore, the instructions were always misleading since I couldn't do any of that so I no longer allowed my phone to sync to the PC wirelessly. I couldn't figure out how it worked.</p><p><br></p><p>BTW, I stopped using the Windows Photo app to download photos because the import feature is buggy. It loses it's place so it downloads my photos several times in the same folder. Then I have to delete duplicates. Or it loses connection and I have to start over again. Windows 10 is worse than Windows 7, which I never had a problem.</p>

    • AnOldAmigaUser

      Premium Member
      03 May, 2019 - 12:22 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#425442">In reply to glenn8878:</a></em></blockquote><p>The Photos app also seems to have a problem with filing images by date taken. It is a particularly poor app to handle what is for most people, an important function.</p>

  • polarPorg

    03 May, 2019 - 12:17 pm

    <p>Or use auto-upload to Onedrive? I'm genuinely curious as to the use case for this feature.</p>

    • Patrick3D

      03 May, 2019 - 12:33 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#425446">In reply to polarPorg:</a></em></blockquote><p>I don't know why but the auto-upload option refuses to remain enabled on my Nokia 3.1. Every time I open OneDrive on this phone I have to turn it back on. Tried contacting Microsoft but of course just got an automated useless response.</p>

  • lvthunder

    Premium Member
    03 May, 2019 - 12:20 pm

    <p>Is this just Android only or does it apply to iOS too?</p>

    • Dan1986ist

      Premium Member
      03 May, 2019 - 1:20 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#425448">In reply to lvthunder:</a></em></blockquote><p>Android Phones only and most likely only certain Android phones with 7.0 or higher. </p>

  • Rob_Wade

    03 May, 2019 - 12:45 pm

    <p>Why would I ever save things from my phone to my PC? I have everything go automatically to OneDrive, where it's almost immediately accessible from any device I choose. This is just silly.</p>

    • Randall Lewis

      03 May, 2019 - 2:55 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#425467">In reply to Rob_Wade:</a></em></blockquote><p>I also save photos to One Drive, but this option is not silly, it just may not be for you. One Drive sync works but doesn't happen instantly, and sometimes not until the phone is on a trusted Wi-Fi network. Your Phone works very quickly as long as the phone and the PC involved are on the same Wi-Fi network. I have Your Phone set to work with my home PC and my Surface Pro that I carry with me. Having a photo save on the Surface Pro means I can show it to groups of people without passing my phone around, can edit bad shots right then and there, and I just find sharing a photo in a text or email much easier to use on the bigger screen and keyboard of the Surface Pro than on my phone UI. </p>

      • Rob_Wade

        06 May, 2019 - 4:21 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#425511">In reply to Randall_Lewis:</a></em></blockquote><p>I've never had any sync issues and it HAS been almost instantaneous. Syncing to your PC is only going to happen if you're on the same WiFi network, so THAT'S not going to be anywhere close to instant. I'm able to pull up pictures on my Surface Pro within seconds of taking them on my Lumia. Or, when I'm testing it, even from my Huawei Android device.</p>

    • glenn8878

      03 May, 2019 - 2:59 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#425467">In reply to Rob_Wade:</a></em></blockquote><p>OneDrive has limited storage. I stopped using it after maxing out. The PC is where I upload my pictures regularly and clean out my smartphone.</p>

    • justme

      Premium Member
      06 May, 2019 - 10:41 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#425467">In reply to Rob_Wade:</a></em></blockquote><p>I dont cosider the option silly, but I do understand that for you, it seems so. In my case, I absolutely want data from my phone saved to my PC and cannot understand the cloud fascination, apart from the convenience of having files/photos available across your devices. My problem, of course, is that I use an iPhone.</p>

      • Rob_Wade

        06 May, 2019 - 4:23 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#426042">In reply to JustMe:</a></em></blockquote><p>Well, I can't understand why anyone is afraid of using the cloud to integrate their entire data and media domain. I want ubiquitous access. Music, pictures, video, movies, documents of any type.</p>

        • justme

          Premium Member
          07 May, 2019 - 3:46 am

          <blockquote><em><a href="#426164">In reply to Rob_Wade:</a></em></blockquote><p>"Afraid" is prehaps the wrong way to put it. There are places and industries in the world where there isnt immediate access to the internet, which is required for the cloud. By its very nature, you are also ceding control of your data to whomever your cloud provider is. You may trust your cloud provider to handle your data appropriately, but you still give them control. If their authetification servers go down and you cant log in, you cant access your data unless you have a local copy, which defeats the purpose of the cloud to begin with. It is simply more effective (for access, security, and privacy reasons) to look after your own data. If you are worried about data loss then do what every IT pro will tell you to do – back it up.</p><p><br></p><p>Even setting those reasons aside, why should I pay someone else to store my data and the 'privilege' to access it every month? Why do I need access to every single file I have at every moment in time I am connected? Regardless of how big your cloud storage is, you will eventually fill it and have to either remove some data from the cloud or pay for more, making the entire enterprise more expensive. For you, that may be money well spent. For me, its just money down the drain.</p><p><br></p><p>I understand and respect that the cloud works for you. It simply doesnt for me.</p>

    • red.radar

      Premium Member
      06 May, 2019 - 11:14 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#425467">In reply to Rob_Wade:</a></em></blockquote><p>Because the cloud is a financial sink hole. You pay over and over for the same storage. And as your data grows it gets exponentially more expensive </p><p><br></p><p>Its more cost effective and more secure(privacy) to mange your own data. You can mitigate dataloss with a good backup strategy. </p><p><br></p><p>Also most consumers don’t need ever present access to all the data they ever generated. The local cache on the phone is good enough for 90% of the people </p>

  • Dan1986ist

    Premium Member
    03 May, 2019 - 1:18 pm

    <p>Really wish that Your Phone worked with Android tablets for things like this. </p>

  • Skittlez

    03 May, 2019 - 3:42 pm

    <p>I am possibly very ignorant on this. However, what was the point of the “my phone” app at all before today? (Or after today for that matter.)</p>

    • BoItmanLives

      04 May, 2019 - 12:04 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#425519">In reply to Skittlez:</a></em></blockquote><p>Microsoft trying to slither their way into other companies mobile platforms after they failed (never really tried) at their own ..</p>

  • BoItmanLives

    04 May, 2019 - 12:02 am

    <p>No thanks. Windows will never touch my phone. Stop trying to hop the mobile bandwagon after windows phone failed.</p>

  • Greg Green

    04 May, 2019 - 10:46 am

    <p>I thought windows easily imported all photos and videos from phone to PC when hooked up by usb. Or was that only Win 7 that did that?</p>

  • zeratul456

    04 May, 2019 - 11:27 am

    <p>If only the app could detect the UWP app so that the app actually worked for me 🙂 </p>

  • Tony Barrett

    04 May, 2019 - 11:56 am

    <p>Why is this even a thing? MS are only leaching off Android because Apple have locked down iOS so much to keep their customers within their ecosystem. It's embarrassing that a company the size of Microsoft can't actually produce a mobile OS people want to buy, so they start trying to eat away at Android from the inside, and this only works because Android is more open and flexible. Would MS let another company do this if Android was their baby? I think not.</p><p>It also makes you wonder, if you do connect your phone to Windows10 what else MS are collecting from it. What permissions does Windows 10 need on your phone exactly? The quick way MS can start siphoning off phone data is to add 'features' like this that encourage you to connect your phone to their OS. Pointless 'feature' that's almost certainly disguised as something else.</p>

  • crmguru

    Premium Member
    04 May, 2019 - 10:12 pm

    <p>I use this feature constantly. Snap pics on the phone then on the PC open phone app and paste to ppt. </p>

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