Move iPhone Photos to an External Drive, Then Delete

You can free iPhone storage, and iCloud storage when iCloud Photos is on, by copying older photos to a USB drive or portable disk, confirming those files open, and only then deleting them from Photos. The space comes back after you empty Recently Deleted, which keeps the photos for 30 days. With iCloud Photos on, that same delete removes the photos from iCloud and your other devices, so check the copy on the drive before you delete.

On a USB-C iPhone the copy is: plug the drive in, select a batch in Photos, tap Share → Save to Files, and choose the drive. Smart Albums can group that batch by what is in the photos before you copy it. Clear screenshots and blurry shots first so the drive does not fill up with pictures you will not open again.

What you need

• A drive the iPhone can connect to. iPhone 15 and later have USB-C, so a USB-C stick or drive plugs straight in. Older iPhones with a Lightning port need Apple's Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter, which also has a Lightning port for charging while it's connected.
• Enough power. Flash drives and most portable SSDs run on the phone's power. Many spinning hard drives need more than an iPhone supplies. If the drive doesn't show up, or iOS says the accessory needs too much power, connect it through a powered hub or plug a charger into the adapter.
• A format the iPhone can write to. exFAT works with iPhone, Mac and Windows, so it's the safe choice. APFS works too if you only use Macs. A drive formatted on Windows as NTFS may show up but refuse to save. Reformatting wipes the drive, so move anything already on it first.
• Wi-Fi, if you use iCloud Photos. With Optimize iPhone Storage on, the phone holds small versions of most photos. Saving them out downloads the full originals first, which is slow over mobile data and a big reason large batches stall.

Method 1: straight from the iPhone (no computer)

1. Plug the drive in. Open the Files app, tap Browse, and check the drive appears under Locations. Make a folder for this batch while you're there, for example Photos 2019. The folder name is all you'll have to find things later.
2. Open Photos and select one batch: a trip, a month, or one year's worth of photos. Keep batches to a few hundred items. The share sheet can stall on thousands at once, and a failed half-copy is worse than a slow full one.
3. Tap the Share button. At the top of the share sheet, Options controls whether location data is included. Leave it on if you want the map information to go with the copies.
4. Scroll down and tap Save to Files. Choose the drive, then the folder you made, and tap Save. Keep the phone unlocked and the drive connected until the progress finishes.
5. Repeat for the next batch.

Videos come along the same way. They're often the biggest things on the phone and the most worth archiving: a single evening of 4K footage can outweigh a year of photos. A vacation's worth of that footage is often why people do this: the end-of-summer photo cleanup. Most of what you are about to copy is shots you will not open again: the 80/20 rule of iPhone photos.

Method 2: with a computer

For a whole library, a computer is faster and less fiddly, and you can point it straight at the external drive.

• Mac: connect the iPhone with a cable, unlock it and tap Trust if asked. Open Image Capture, select the iPhone in the sidebar, set Import To to a folder on the external drive, and import. Leave the delete after import option off. You want to check the copy before anything leaves the phone.
• Windows: connect and trust the iPhone, then import with the Windows Photos app, or copy from the phone's DCIM folder in File Explorer, onto the external drive.

Two catches when you use a cable. First, a computer only sees what's actually on the phone. If iCloud Photos has optimised your library, the photos stored only in iCloud won't be there to import. In that case use Method 1, or download from iCloud.com or the Photos app on a Mac signed in to the same account. Second, look at Transfer to Mac or PC at the bottom of the Photos settings. Automatic converts to JPEG for compatibility; Keep Originals copies the HEIC files as they are. If you need JPEGs and you are not at a computer, convert HEIC to JPEG on the iPhone first.

Check the copy before you delete anything

This is the step people skip, and it's the one that decides whether this goes well. On the drive, in Files or on the computer:

• Compare counts. The Photos selection showed how many items you chose; the folder should hold about the same number. Live Photos can show up as a photo file plus a short video file, so a slightly higher number is normal. A lower one isn't.
• Open a handful. Pick a few from the start, middle and end of the batch, and play at least one video all the way through. A file that's there but won't open is not a backup.
• Eject the drive properly on a computer before you unplug it. Pulling it mid-write is the most common way a good copy goes bad.

Delete from the phone, knowing what it does

Now select the same batch in Photos and delete it. Selecting a whole month or year is fiddly in Photos; how to delete multiple photos on iPhone at once covers the gestures that actually grab a large batch. What the delete does depends on one setting:

• iCloud Photos on: there is one library, so the delete removes the photos from the iPhone, from iCloud, and from your iPad and Mac. That's what frees up your iCloud storage too, and it's exactly why the checked copy had to come first. (If you'd rather keep them in iCloud and only lighten the phone, that's a different job: see deleting photos from iPhone but not iCloud.)
• iCloud Photos off: the delete only affects this phone. Other devices keep their own copies.

Either way, the photos go to Recently Deleted for 30 days first, and they still take up space there. The space only comes back when that album is emptied. If you want a safety margin, wait a few days, open a few files from the drive again, and then empty it. There's a walkthrough in how to empty Recently Deleted on iPhone, and if you delete something by mistake, how to get deleted photos back covers the 30-day window.

Don't archive the junk

Every duplicate, blurry shot and old parking-spot screenshot you copy costs drive space and transfer time, and it'll still be clutter when you open that folder in five years. Clearing those first makes the archive smaller and easier to browse later. You can do it by hand, using the Duplicates album in Photos under Utilities, the Screenshots album under Media Types, and your own eyes for blur. There's more in finding and deleting duplicate photos. If you want to compare dedicated apps before you copy anything, see which iPhone photo cleaner apps are worth using.

Phone Diet runs on iPhone and iPad (iOS 17.0 or later, or iPadOS 17.0 or later). Similar Photos groups near-identical shots and marks the best one 'Keep'. Duplicates are exact copies. It also finds blurry and dark photos, screenshots, screen recordings, Live Photos, and bursts, and it lists Largest Files. Photos never leave the device. Video compression uses HEVC and can make a video up to 70% smaller. Undo has a countdown, and Recover keeps removed items for 30 days, or 7 or 60. Smart Albums and swipe to sort are included. The full scan is free, and the first cleanup of up to 1 GB is free.

What it doesn't do: it doesn't copy, export or back up anything to a drive or a computer. The copying in this guide is all Apple's Photos and Files apps. If your plan is to move the whole library off the phone and you don't mind the junk coming along, you don't need our app for this job. The full scan is free, and the first cleanup of up to 1 GB is free. After that, cleaning is an in-app purchase. It needs iOS 17.0 or later, or iPadOS 17.0 or later.

Keeping the phone from filling up again

An archive works best as a habit rather than a one-off rescue. Once a year, say every January, move the year before last onto the drive, check it, and delete it from the phone. If you'd rather keep some of your big videos on the phone, compressing them is the middle ground: see how to compress videos on iPhone.

Common questions

Can I copy photos from an iPhone to a USB drive without a computer?

Yes. Plug the drive in (directly on a USB-C iPhone, or through Apple's Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter on older models), select photos in the Photos app, tap Share, choose Save to Files, pick the drive under Locations and tap Save. Work in batches of a month or a trip at a time rather than the whole library at once.

If I delete photos from my iPhone, are they deleted from iCloud too?

If iCloud Photos is on, yes. There is one library shared by the iPhone, iCloud and every other signed-in device, so a delete on the phone removes the photo everywhere. That is why the copy on your drive has to exist and be checked before you delete anything.

Why does my iPhone not see my external hard drive?

The two usual causes are power and format. Many portable hard drives draw more power than an iPhone supplies; a powered hub or the power port on Apple's camera adapter fixes that. Drives formatted for Windows as NTFS may not be writable from an iPhone; exFAT works with iPhone, Mac and Windows.

Will the copies on the drive be full quality?

Saving from the Photos app gives you the full-resolution photo, downloading the original from iCloud first if the phone only holds an optimised version. That download is why big batches can be slow, so do them on Wi-Fi. When importing on a computer instead, check Settings > Photos > Transfer to Mac or PC if you want HEIC originals rather than converted JPEGs.

Can Phone Diet: Clean Up Storage move photos to an external drive?

Phone Diet runs on iPhone and iPad (iOS 17.0 or later, or iPadOS 17.0 or later). Similar Photos groups near-identical shots and marks the best one 'Keep'. Duplicates are exact copies. It also finds blurry and dark photos, screenshots, screen recordings, Live Photos, and bursts, and it lists Largest Files. Photos never leave the device. Video compression uses HEVC and can make a video up to 70% smaller. Undo has a countdown, and Recover keeps removed items for 30 days, or 7 or 60. Smart Albums and swipe to sort are included. The full scan is free, and the first cleanup of up to 1 GB is free.