Apple does not ship iCloud Photos onto a Pixel. A cable through a computer is a DCIM copy. Live Photos and Hidden become leftovers. If the search is transfer photos from iPhone to Android without sitting at a laptop all evening, the path that has been reproduced is: finish Azalea on the iPhone, point Android at the same bucket or the same USB folder, claim. Originals stay on your S3, USB, or Samba. They never pass through an Azalea server. Bundle net.duguying.photos.

After the claim, the Android camera roll may still be empty. That is expected. Assets live in the backed-up library. Download what you want into MediaStore. Favorites will not come along because MediaStore cannot inherit iOS local_identifier. The files will.

The Pixel 8 → iPhone 16 lab on 2 Apr 2026 used a bucket (11,614 items, 81.95 GB, S3 us-west-2). iPhone → Android is the same mechanism the other way. If you only have a disk in a hotel room, write on the iPhone, then OTG into Android. USB mode switching bit the Huawei Mate 60 in February: charging-only until file transfer was selected.

Steps

On the iPhone, install Azalea, tap Allow Full Access. Limited Library will transfer only the ticked set. Open Cloud Album → Backup Storage. Add S3 (English labs: us-west-2) or USB Device. For USB, pick a folder in Files; iOS has no volume list. Bookmark is security-scoped. Tap Test Connection on a bucket. Wrong region fails the first list.
Run backup until Pending is 0. Keep USB in the foreground. After a lock, Resume Backup. Spot-check a Live Photo pair (still plus motion clip), one HEIC, one 4K clip, opened from the destination. Twenty-three colon names were escaped on the 14 Mar 2026 iPhone 15 USB run (18,432 items, 86.41 GB, 257 minutes); do not rename them in Explorer.
Install Azalea Photos on Android. Grant Allow access to all, not selected photos. The banner You can currently access only the photos you selected means the claim can succeed while the local library still looks thin; that is a permission problem, not a missing bucket.
Add the exact same storage profile. Same bucket, region, keys, or the same USB tree via Choose backup folder on USB with persist. Display name can differ. Provider is read-only. A look-alike profile with a different bucket name is a new empty library.
When the sheet Historical indexes found appears — This backup target already has indexes from other devices. Claim one to continue, or start fresh. — tap Claim, not Start fresh. Start fresh treats the iPhone work as not backed up from Android’s point of view and can mark local Android photos as done when they were never uploaded.
Compare item counts and bytes. A gap of a few hundred is often a worker still running on the iPhone. Do not factory-reset the iPhone. Plug USB before opening the Android profile so probe can see the volume. If the URI changes after reboot, grant the tree again.

If counts mismatch, assume the backup is still running before you wipe either phone. The switch-day checklist is the rollback: keep using the old phone; the disk and bucket are still there.

What does not travel

Favorites, Hidden-as-iOS-hides-it, and other PhotoKit flags keyed by local_identifier. Android matches by content. Live Photos arrive as the pair of files the export wrote; the Pixel will not magically build an iOS Live Photo object. Motion photos the other direction have the same kind of mismatch. That is an identity-space limit, not a forgotten toggle.

iCloud export and “Move to Android” stories that run through Apple’s website flatten albums. Use them only as a supplement if you must. They are not the main pipe in this product.

English object-storage tests used S3 us-west-2. Chinese write-ups of the same method may mention COS Guangzhou. Same client, different invoice. Samba works if both phones can see the share; see NAS backup. Do not forward TCP 445 to the internet to finish a hotel transfer. Take a disk or use S3.

One failure: Start fresh on the wrong index

Picking Start fresh on a bucket that already holds the iPhone library makes Android treat those keys as unrelated. You can also pick the wrong historical device and mark photos on the new phone as done when they were never uploaded. The in-app warning says that. Read the device name. The April Pixel → iPhone run had seven retried network errors and one broken MP4 (VID_20231102_221418.mp4, 2,048,512 bytes) that was already junk on the Pixel. Failed ≠ lost, except for that one source file.

Huawei OTG yank at 61% (8,359 items, 36.64 GB) recovered after replug. Do not claim from Android while the iPhone USB job is still at 61%.

FAQ

Can I transfer photos from iPhone to Android without a computer?

Yes. S3 or a portable disk is the shuttle. Both phones run Azalea. Claim on Android after iPhone Pending is 0. A computer is optional for spot-checking .album/manifest.jsonl or downloading a key.

Why is the Android gallery empty after a successful claim?

The camera roll is not the backed-up library. Open Azalea’s library view for the claimed store. Download items you want in Google Photos / the system gallery. Recents on Android will not auto-fill with 18,000 iPhone stills.

Will Live Photos play on the Pixel?

You get the still and the motion clip as files. You do not get Apple’s Live Photo widget. If the motion file is there, a player can open it. That is the honest outcome of an original export.

Yes. Claim is not a second copy; it reads .album/manifest.jsonl. iOS uses a volume UUID when two disks are both named Backup. Android must re-grant a tree if the URI changes. Details: claim the same disk and USB backup.

Where do I get the apps?

/en/download. Protocol notes: /en/features/migration. Object storage: /en/features/object-storage.

Transfer photos from iPhone to Android without a computer dump