Switch from iPhone to Pixel photos, or the other way, is a sequence with a rollback, not a single cable. Azalea’s claim is the shuttle: same S3 bucket or same USB folder, originals on media you control, no Azalea-hosted files. Bundle net.duguying.photos. A blank claim is not a reason to wipe the old phone. Rollback is “keep using the old phone.” The disk and bucket are still there.

Charge the old phone past 50%. You will not finish 80 GB at 10%. Turn off the other cloud’s “delete after backup.” Screenshot the status page when Pending hits 0. Spot-check newest, oldest, longest video, and one ugly filename. Install Azalea on the new phone with the same keys or the same USB tree. Plug the disk before opening the profile. Compare counts. A gap of a few hundred is often a worker still running. Leave the old phone in a drawer for 48 hours.

If claim fails, do not factory reset. The usual own-goal is a new profile with a different bucket name. The provider field is read-only; a custom display name does not retarget the bucket.

Switch-day steps

Night before: old phone on Wi-Fi and power. Azalea Allow Full Access (iOS) or Allow access to all (Android). Backup Storage profile already tested with Test Connection. English S3: us-west-2 in the April lab. USB: folder picked in Files (iOS bookmark) or Choose backup folder on USB with persist (Android).
Morning: confirm Pending is 0 and Failed is empty or understood. Screenshot Status. On 14 Mar 2026 the iPhone 15 USB copy was 18,432 items, 86.41 GB, 257 minutes — not a lunch-break job. On 2 Apr 2026 Pixel 8 → iPhone 16 was 11,614 items, 81.95 GB, 664 minutes including overnight idle. Start earlier than the carrier appointment.
Spot-check twenty items on the destination: stills, one 4K, one Live Photo pair or motion photo, one name that needed escaping. Open bytes, not thumbnails.
New phone: install Azalea before you sign into iCloud Photos or Google Photos backup. Unbox into Azalea first, the way the April iPhone 16 was set up. Add the same profile. When Historical indexes found appears, Claim. Do not tap Start fresh unless you intend to ignore the old phone’s ledger.
Compare counts and bytes. Camera roll on the new phone may stay empty. That is not failure. The backed-up library should list the keys. Favorites will not cross Android ↔ iOS because local_identifier does not map.
Use the new phone for a day. Keep the old one off the wipe. After 48 hours of opening real files, then think about a reset. If anything is missing, the old camera roll is the rollback.

USB on switch day: iOS will not list volumes. Open the disk in Files first, then Azalea, then Check again after attach. Android OTG may enumerate as charging; the Mate 60 needed file-transfer mode. Yank at 61% (8,359 items, 36.64 GB) recovered with twelve temps rewritten — do not reset during that pause.

Rollback, in practice

Keep the old phone charged. Keep the disk labelled. If two disks are both named Backup, iOS volumeIdentity() UUID is what distinguishes them; some file-provider volumes return nil, then you label the enclosure yourself. Do not rename folders in Finder or File Station “to make it tidy” on the morning of the switch. Claim reads .album/manifest.jsonl (USB) or the object-storage index/ manifest. Physical path changes miss.

If the new phone shows Waiting for USB device, the tree or bookmark is dead. Re-pick. If Test Connection fails, stop. Wrong region, expired key, or guest Samba with a server that rejects empty passwords (DSM local users did that in the family NAS run).

Do not enable iCloud Photos on a new iPhone before the claim if you are coming from Android. Two libraries make it unclear what you just downloaded. The lab unboxed into Azalea first.

One failure: wiping because Recents looked empty

The April claim matched item count in the backed-up library while Recents stayed empty until manual downloads. Wiping the Pixel at that moment would have been fine only because S3 already held 81.95 GB. Wiping an iPhone whose USB job was still at Pending 400 would not. Ten minutes of an empty claim is region, disk, or a second profile — not proof the old library is gone.

One broken MP4 from an older Infinix sat on the Pixel, hashed honestly, and stayed unrecoverable. Counted as one. Not a reason to abort the switch, and not a reason to assume every Failed row is gone forever. Retry all failed after Wi-Fi returns.

FAQ

What is the rollback if the Pixel claim is blank?

Use the iPhone. Check bucket name, region, and keys. Re-grant the USB tree. Do not reset. The library is on the shuttle, not in Azalea’s cloud — there isn’t one.

How long should I keep the old phone?

Forty-eight hours after counts match has been enough in lab switches. Keep it longer if you have Hidden albums or files you never opened on the destination. Recently Deleted on the old phone is not a shuttle.

Can I switch using only a NAS?

Yes, if both phones see the share. Synology DS220+ DSM 7.2.2, share photos, iPhone 14 Pro and Xiaomi 14, 15,767 items, 69.9 GB, January–March 2026. Prefer an IP over nas.local. Enable Local Network on iOS. Do not port-forward 445. NAS guide.

Why don’t Favorites show on the Pixel?

Android cannot reuse iOS local_identifier. Re-star what you care about. Files are present in the claimed library.

/en/download. Directional guides: iPhone to Android, Android to iPhone. Feature overview: /en/features/migration.

Switch-day photo checklist (and how to roll back)