Download photos from your smartphone

Automatic import feature in Tonfotos

Today, most of our photographs are taken with a smartphone. It is always at hand when something happens that we want to remember later. But phone memory is limited and there comes a point when we discover there is no more space to store our memories. Then we start looking for opportunities to move our valuable files somewhere else.

As experience shows, storing photos only on your phone is not only unreliable, but also not always convenient. By moving them to a computer hard drive or external drive you can:

• ensure they will not disappear;
• view photos and videos on a big screen, sorting by time or location, and editing will become much easier and more pleasant;
• it will be more convenient to create a complete family album, collecting not only your own photos, but also those of friends, children, and relatives.

How can you prevent losing your memories?

You can download photos from your phone to an archive in different ways:

• using a USB cable connection,
• via iTunes or AirDrop if you have an iPhone,
• or through additional applications that need to be installed on the phone.

But this takes time and effort: you need to select files, save those that you do not have, while trying not to duplicate anything.

Tonfotos will automatically sort and save your photos from the phone's memory to the archive. Connect your phone from time to time to the computer where the application is installed. And that's it.

Preparing to work with the smartphone photo archive

Before setting up to import photos from your phone:

• Download and install Tonfotos if you don't already have the program on your computer or laptop. It's free.
• Decide where you will store your photos: on your computer hard drive, external hard drive, network server, or cloud.
• Add the selected location in the "Archive Location" menu dialog so that the program knows about it and starts indexing it.

Setting up importing photos from your phone

1. Connect your smartphone with a cable to your computer or laptop.
2. Unlock your smartphone (with your password, fingerprint or Face ID).
3. Confirm if the smartphone asks if this computer can be trusted.
4. Select “Import” after seeing the Tonfotos message about the phone being connected.
5. Specify where to import - the same folder where your archive is stored.
6. Do not check the “no older than” checkbox if this is your first time downloading photos from this phone. So, the first time you import, the entire photo album from your phone will be saved.
7. On subsequent connections, you can set the date of the last download. This way you won't have to re-save all your old photos.
8. Be sure to check the “automatically…” box if you plan to download photos from this phone in the future. Tonfotos will save them every time you connect to your computer, without asking questions.
9. Click "Import".
10. Wait for the notification about the import starting, and most importantly, about its completion. Do not close the application until the import is completed, otherwise not everything will be downloaded. This may take some time. If there are several thousand photos, then it makes sense to leave them to download overnight.

How to change import settings

It might happen that after setting up automatic downloading of photos in Tonfotos, you may need to change the settings - the location where photos are saved, for example. In this case, you can open the settings dialog by clicking through the menu “Import...“ and select the phone in the list of sources. Check that the smartphone is connected to the computer, and the import is already completed.

Sometimes when connecting a phone to a computer for the first time and being asked to download photos, users will click “not now”. Then you may need to restart the import later. To do this, open the import settings through the menu, as described above.

Another way to bring up a dialog box is to disconnect the phone, wait 30 seconds and reconnect it. In this case, proceed as described in the section “Setting up the import of photos from your phone”.

Import from multiple phones and cameras

The option to import photos to Tonfotos is available not only for phones, but also for digital cameras. The program recognizes all devices and stores separate settings for each: the date of the last download, the folder where to save.

This is convenient when, for example, photos from the phones of spouses are automatically imported into the “Family Archive” folder on the computer. And from a digital camera, which is used for professional photo shoots at work, files are simultaneously downloaded to the “Work“ folder.

Tonfotos imports new photos from each device in turn, even if you connect them all to your computer at the same time.

Tonfotos helps preserve memories

The loss or breakdown of the phone is the loss of a large amount of information. You can resolve the issue with linked banking and SIM cards by calling the bank and your mobile operator. Restoring photos will be more problematic. If you fail to return or repair the phone, then several years of your life will never feature in your family album. These are the sincere smiles shared with friends, the delight of children from swimming in the sea, your fear along with the joy of going down the mountain, the mixed feelings of a child on the September holidays, the turmoil and fun at the opening of the summer season in May. And it is a great shame to lose these emotions.

Take advantage of the free features of Tonfotos to protect yourself from the risk of never again seeing those memorable photos and videos of the important moments in your life.