What Is Photos Companion? Microsoft’s iOS App Quickly Transfers Photos To PC

Microsoft has released a new iOS app that’s specially designed for consumers who use its Windows 10 PCs and Apple’s iPhones and or iPads. Called Photos Companion, the app makes it easy for users to transfer photos from their iOS devices to their PCs.

The Redmond giant has been working on the app for some time now. It was first circulated among beta testers last November. Its actually a product of a Microsoft Garage project, and Microsoft hopes that it could appeal to many people, especially to students.

The company says Photos Companion will come in handy for students who do not back up the photos they take to a cloud storage such as its very own OneDrive. Through this app, students will have a fast way to bring smartphone content to Windows PCs in the school setting.

“We began developing a simple, experimental app for iOS and Android to see if we could unblock educators and help them begin using the Photos app in their classrooms,” Microsoft was quoted as saying by MacRumors.

”We knew that students often captured on multiple phones or tablets, but leveraged a single ‘project’ PC to assemble their media and create their final project. We also knew that Wi-Fi access in the classroom was great between devices, but that any solution that required the cloud for transfer could be blocked by overloaded networks,” the company added.

Microsoft went on to say that Photos Companion is primarily designed to facilitate direct wireless transfer of content between phones or mobile devices and the Photos app for Windows 10 PCs. The firm also noted that users won’t have to worry about network speeds and mobile data charges when they use the new app.

Photos Companion for iOS devices is very easy to set up. All it takes is scanning the QR code flashed on the screen of the Windows 10 PC. To obtain a QR code, users must open the Photos app on their Windows 10 device then select Import > From mobile over Wi-Fi. Once the QR code is shown, users must point their iOS device’s camera scanner to the code to complete the setup. After which, users may send multiple photos over the same Wi-Fi network.

Microsoft’s Photos Companion iOS app is clocking in at 28 MB. It requires iOS 10.2 or later versions of Apple’s mobile operating system. It’s compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices.