I have a collection of old family photos that I want to have available on my iPad for browsing, but I do not want to use Photos and use up cloud storage. Is there a good app for just browsing photos and viewing them on an iPhone or iPad?
Files. Put the photos in a folder in iCloud Drive. Then in Files on the iPad, move the folder to On My iPad.
I haven’t found browsing files on the iPad to be very good. You can view some things in Files, but if you open the file (easy to do while tapping) it will open in some app (is it even possible to pick which application a certain file type opens in iOS?) then you have to go back to Files to browse again.
I could open it with Quick Look in Files, but you have limited browsing and a tap and then you are opening in something another app. I deleted Documents App because my jpeg images kept opening in there, and now they are going to iCab browser.
I use Files to view images (usually JPEGs and PNGs, but other image formats work as well). Tap the file and it opens in Files — no other app involved. Swipe left to view the next file in the folder. I know this works because I do it all the time.
Try out Documents from Readdle
Do you sync other photos via iCloud?
If you don’t do this at all, then it’s a no-brainer. Configure your Mac’s Photos to not sync anything with iCloud, in the Settings:
Create an album in Photos containing the pictures you want to keep on your iPad.
Then, if you sync via USB:
- Connect your iPad
- Select it in The Finder
- On the Photos tab, click the button to sync “Selected albums”
- In the list of albums below, click the box next to that album and any others you want to sync.
When you next sync, the photos in that album (and no others) will be copied to your iPad. No iCloud anything will be used.
I presume that you can do the same if you sync over Wi-Fi, but I’ve never done that.
If you are using iCloud to sync your Photos app, then maybe you don’t want to do this, but you can still USB-sync from other folders.
On the drop-down menu next to “Sync photos to your device from:”, select a folder on your Mac. You can then sync every picture in that folder, or you can select specific sub-folders to sync:
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Yes, I have extensive images in Photos that sync through iCloud. I had Documents installed but it kept bugging me to upgrade, which I hate. I will try it again. I did get Photo Manager Pro to try out at $3.
I still do not understand now iOS determines which app will open a file. Is there a way to tell it, like on macOS?
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I have been using Photo Manager Pro for years on both an iPad and iPhone. I greatly prefer it to Photos.
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