How to Transfer Files From Android to PC
Jun. 10, 2024We’ve all been in a situation where we wanted to transfer files from Android phones to PCs or Laptops but couldn’t find the fastest or the right way to do it. Thanks to the ecosystem developments across many platforms, transferring files from Android to PC has become incredibly easy, and there are many ways to do it. In this guide, let’s look at all the ways to transfer files from Android to PC.
Method 1: Using a USB cable
The easiest way to transfer files from Android to PC is using a USB cable. It’s also one of the fastest ways provided your phone supports USB 3.0 standard (4.8 Gbit/s) and if you have a USB 3.0 supported cable. USB 2.0 is still plenty fast for transferring regular files as it can transfer at a maximum of 480 Mbps, but if your phone only supports USB 2.0 and you have huge files to transfer, it may take longer.
Most of us don’t carry a USB cable, but there are ways you can still transfer files from your Android device to your PC. One way is using Google’s Quick Share (formerlyNearby Share), which is also available for Windows.
The files will be saved in the Downloads directory, but you can change it from Quick Share settings on your PC.
If the above two methods didn’t work for you, the next best way of transferring files from Android to PC is by using Snapdrop. It’s incredibly easy to use.
If your Android device offers a microSD card slot, you can easily transfer all your files from Android to an SD card, and then use the microSD slot on your laptop or PC (if it has one) or an SDHC adapter to transfer those files to your PC. Modern smartphones feature hybrid SIM card trays where you can either use two SIM cards or one SIM and a microSD card. You can check if it’s a hybrid or dedicated tray by popping open the SIM tray using a SIM ejector tool.
We all have a Google account where we get 15GB of free cloud storage distributed across Google’s suite of applications, including Google Drive. You can use this storage to transfer files from Android to PC. This method could be tedious if you have files bigger than 15GB but it works, nonetheless. All you need to do is:
If you’re on Windows, you can download the Google Drive app, log in to your Google account, and your Google Drive and its content will then show up among other drives in the This PC app. In addition to Google Drive, you can also use services like OneDrive, Dropbox, and Box to transfer files from your Android device to a PC.
A pretty decent workaround if all else fails. You’d be surprised by just how many people store their files in their emails for later use. Since Gmail storage is also a part of that 15GB distributed storage, any files you upload in the email will count toward the same. All you need to do is select files, upload them in an email, and save that email as a draft on your Android phone.
You can then open Gmail in the browser on your PC, open the email drafts, and download all files by clicking on them. One of the biggest caveats of transferring files this way is that Gmail has a file size limit of 25 MB. Hence, this method won’t work if you have files spanning more than 25 MB.
By far the slowest way of transferring files from Android to PC, but it works at the end of the day. Transferring huge files will be a pain, since even the latest Bluetooth standard can only transfer at a maximum speed of 2Mbps.
And these are some of the ways you can transfer files from Android to PC. USB cable, Nearby Share, and Snapdrop are the best methods, while the rest can be used if the former ones aren’t working. What are some of the challenges you’ve faced when transferring files from Android to PC? Let us know in the comments below.
