When an iPhone gets filled up with videos, and you want to back them up somewhere, here’s my lifehack:
1) open a new box on Google, say your.email.videos@gmail.com, and get 15 GB of space
2) install Google Photos. In it, go to accounts and there click “add a new Google account” specifying the one we’ve created. Next, you need to turn off backup immediately. It will start dumping photos there upon the first launch.
3) unfortunately, you can’t select to sync videos only, and there’s no button “select a folder from the phone and upload only that.” So, the next part is somewhat complicated and nontrivial – search through the app for all videos. There’s a search function where you need to start selecting Videos; it will offer suggestions. Just by the word Videos, it finds all sorts of things. Then press the three dots and choose Select. Now you can select videos one click at a time for days with videos. Keep selecting until you are tired, but make sure not to exceed the 15GB limit (because then you’ll get a “don’t want to upload, you have no space left” window and have to uncheck some). After selecting, there’s no “upload to cloud” button. But there is a “add to album” button – a plus symbol. There you either pick an album or choose to create one. Afterward, an upload modal window will appear. On the computer at photo.google.com, you can watch as the videos appear. If 15 GB gets filled up, open a new box and repeat the procedure for the remaining videos, including those that didn’t upload due to lack of space on the first box. But generally, 15 GB is usually enough. Overall, if you check “optimize video,” a lot more can fit but with a loss of image quality. Then go on the phone and delete all videos since they’re already on Google.
As for photos, it’s convenient to sync them with Google Photos in the usual way. Because Google generally has a good photo search, it can group by faces, link photos to maps. This is quite valuable. But only for photos, it doesn’t work that way with videos. Therefore, in the Google Photos App, do not forget to disable video synchronization since we have a separate account for videos above. Yes, someday there won’t be enough space for photos on the main account, and in this case, I already pay Google for additional space. But with videos, it would have been used up significantly faster than without them. A second of normal home video in standard quality takes up 1-2 times more space than a single photo.
By the way, mass deleting from Google Photos isn’t that simple. There just isn’t such a function – clearly on purpose, so that you buy more space. There are external apps. I deleted using an API; had to write it in Python.
Additionally, you can download them to your computer. You can do it directly from the phone via a wire, running the Image Capture program on a Mac. There you can sort by file kind=MOV, and specify a folder on the laptop to dump the output.
Of course, there’s always the option to pay Apple for storage, but I’ve already gathered so many subscriptions for the family that I balk at adding one more. Especially if it’s not particularly necessary.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 