Answer this before picking a method
Every option below does the same basic job — get files off the phone — but they disagree on what happens next. Photos app import merges everything into your Mac's photo library, with albums, Memories and face detection. Image Capture, AirDrop and a direct drive connection just move files, and leave the library alone. If these photos are personal, the library is usually what you want. If they're a client shoot, a project, or footage headed into an editor, a plain folder of untouched original files is almost always the better outcome.
Photos app (the default)
Plug in with a cable, or open the Photos app with the phone nearby if you have iCloud Photos on both devices — it offers to import anything not already synced. This is the path most people land on by accident, and it's fine for personal photos: everything ends up organized, searchable and backed up to iCloud automatically. The tradeoff is that files stop being individually accessible as files — they live inside the Photos library package, and pulling one back out means exporting it again.
Image Capture (the one most people don't know about)
Image Capture ships with every Mac and lives in Applications. Connect the iPhone by cable, open it, and it shows every photo and video on the device as a flat list — pick a destination folder, select what you want, and it copies the original files there with their original filenames, no library, no albums, no automatic organizing. It can also delete from the phone after copying, right from the same window. For anyone who wants project folders instead of a photo library, this is the tool that already exists on every Mac and gets overlooked.
AirDrop
Fastest for a handful of files between two nearby Apple devices — no cable, no cloud, works over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth directly between the devices. It doesn't scale well past a few dozen files at once, and depending on what you choose to send from the share sheet, it can hand over a compressed copy instead of the original — worth checking before assuming what lands on the Mac matches what's on the phone.
Check the size before you assume it's the original. Sharing a video from the Photos app share sheet sometimes offers a size/quality choice; picking the largest option is what keeps the original bitrate and resolution intact instead of a re-encoded copy.
Cable to an external drive, no computer library involved
On iPhones with USB-C, you can connect an external SSD or a USB drive directly to the phone and use the Files app to copy photos and videos straight onto it — genuinely useful for freeing up phone storage on a trip without touching a laptop at all. It's slower than a Mac-side copy for large batches, but it doesn't require a computer in the loop.
Side by side
| Original files kept? | Touches your library? | Best for | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photos app | Yes, inside the library | Yes, by design | Personal photos you want organized and synced |
| Image Capture | Yes, as plain files | No | Client work, projects, anything headed to an editor |
| AirDrop | Depends on share sheet choice | Optional | A handful of files, fast, no cable |
| Files app to a drive | Yes | No | Freeing phone storage without a computer |