XPost: misc.phone.mobile.iphone

This requires NO additional software to be installed on anything. All of this functionality is native to Windows, Linux and Unix (iOS/iPadOS).

First, to avoid ANY confusion. This method does all of the copying to/from Windows on the iOS device. Which makes sense. Windows is the server. iOS is the client. Not to mention that when I want a file on my phone that is currently only on my PC, it makes no sense to go to the PC and send it to the phone. Why not just get it on the phone directly? My Windows PC is not with me wherever I am in the house. That's what networks are for.

Also, when you are at work and need a file from the company servers, you don't go to the server and push the file down to your PC. You connect to the server and get the file, from your PC. Which is exactly what we will do here.

Anyways. Find your Windows IP address. There are many ways to do that, surely you don't need directions for that.

On Windows, share the C (or whatever) drive. Right click the drive, Give
Access To, Advanced Sharing, Sharing Tab, Advanced Sharing again. Click Share This Folder. Make sure you give full control under the Permissions on that screen, if you want to be able to create/edit/delete files on Windows from
your iPhone/iPad. If all you want to do is copy files from Windows to iOS
(one direction only), then the default Read Permission is fine. You can also set the maximum number of simultaneous users here.

You also need an account with a password on Windows. You should already have this anyway. This does NOT have to be Microsoft account. A local account is fine. Name can be Files and password can be anything you want.

The above only needs to be done once. If you are already networking multiple Windows/Macs/whatever (as I do here) then all of this is already done. Also
the above instructions are for Windows 10 Pro. Windows Home I THINK is
slightly different. It still works, but I have not used any Windows Home versions for many years.

On any iPhone/iPad with at least iOS 13, connect to your local wifi. The same one that your Windows PC is on. Open the Files app. Click on the 3 dots in the circle at the top. One of the options is Connect To Server. Tap that. Enter
the IP address of the Windows PC. Connect as Registered User. Enter your login name and password.

Now you will see the Windows C (or whatever) drive on your iPhone/iPad. Navigate to whatever folder you want. Tap a file and hold, the menu will pop up. Choose Copy. Then tap On My iPad on the left for an iPad. For an iPhone, return to the main Browse screen and tap On My iPhone. That will you take you to your "users" folder on the iPhone/iPad. Here you can create folders for stuff that you download from the internet or from your local network. Tap and hold, tap Paste.

Done and done. Easy, nothing to install. Copying from iOS to Windows is just
as easy. Copy from On My iPhone/iPad and paste to whatever folder on the Windows drive.

Now that the server part is setup on Windows, all you need to do is Connect To Server anytime you want to move files. On ANY iOS device that is on the same network as the Windows PC in question.

Note that this is all standard SMB networking stuff. SMB networking is how Windows/Linux/Unix share files/folders with each other on a network. You share the (drive/folder/whatever) on one and connect to that share on as many others as needed. Offices using Windows use this exact same method for users to connect to company Windows file servers.

Also note that you can share any folder(s) individually, instead of sharing
the entire drive. You could share only your Windows User folder, for example.
Or you could share a different data drive. I have 4 drives shared here: C, D, E and F. I have MANY years of photos, PDFs, music and video files, etc. You are in complete control of this.

But for me, sharing the entire drive is just easier. Because you don't have to worry about saving/moving things on Windows to a "special folder" to make them available on the network. Besides, you have to login via the Files app (or on another Windows box, etc.) to see anything. So there is security.

The only issue you might see is that your IP address of the Windows box might change after some number of days. Some wifi routers change IP addresses at what seems to be random times. Mine here do not (Netgear). IP addresses are based on the MAC addresses of each device. But there are easy ways to fix
that issue.

I do this all the time using iOS 17.7.2 and 18.4. I also have an iPhone 8 Plus with 16.7.10. Works fine there too. I have also tested Windows 7, 8.1, 11
and Server 2012 R2. All work fine, because they all use the same SMB networking method. I have been doing this for around 4 (5?) years, which was when I first learned of this. I was playing with the Files app and stumbled upon the "Connect To Server" option.

Before that I was emailing things to myself. That of course works, but there are file size limits to email attachments. Using the SMB method here, you can copy entire folders back and forth. Only limitation is the amount of storage you have on Windows and iOS.

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