5 easy ways to transfer photos from phone to Chromebook wirelessly

A Chromebook doesn’t run a traditional desktop operating system so the OS might at first seem unfamiliar to new users. That said, Google has designed the OS to feel familiar and many basic functions are better implemented than even on a Windows PC. Today, we’ll be taking a look at how to transfer photos wireless to your Chromebook.

Using Quick Share

Most Android phones and tablets available today have a feature called Quick Share. This is one of the easiest methods to use provided both devices are compatible.

The first thing you’ll need to do is check that both devices are signed in to the same Google account and that Quick Share is enabled in Settings. Then open the gallery app on your phone, tap the share icon on the photo you want to share, and select Quick Share. Select the Chromebook from the list of nearby devices that appears and you’re done.

The shared photo will land up in the Downloads folder on your Chromebook.

Using Phone Hub

Another option is the built-in Phone Hub feature on your Chromebook. It’s available by default on devices running newer versions of ChromeOS and allows you to access your phone from within ChromeOS.

You can use Phone Hub to connect to your phone and then access the most recent photos that you took. The complete library isn’t accessible by this method, but for sharing images you just took, this app works very well.

Using Google Photos

Google Photos is another great way to share photos. Google offers 15GB of shared storage to everyone with a Google account and if you’ve allowed your phone to backup your photos via Google Photos, your Chromebook will be able to access them directly.

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You simply open the Google Photos app on your Chromebook or head to the Google Photos site and you’ll find all the uploaded photos for you to peruse. Note that both devices need an active internet connection for this, and that only photos backed up to Photos will be accessible from your Chromebook. The sync process might take time if your devices have a slow internet connection.

Using Google Drive

Similar to Google Photos, you can use Google Drive to share images. In this case, photos aren’t backed up manually so you’ll need to upload them to a Drive folder via your phone.

Then you can access Google Drive via your Chromebook and download the ones that you want.

Using messaging apps

Our preferred method for sharing photos when no app or Quick Share like option is available is via a messaging app like WhatsApp or Telegram. This is especially advantageous if you have, say, an Apple iPhone or iPad. Both apps offer a ‘Me’ user, which is a chat account where you message yourself. Simply share a photo to that user via your app and download the message via the app’s web interface on your Chromebook.

Photos shared this way are compressed by default, but you can share them as files via the app to upload the original file.

As you can tell, the photo sharing process is quite straightforward and you should have no trouble transferring an image from your phone to a Chromebook regardless of which model device you have.