Bridging Devices: iOS Files App Meets Windows

In this episode, Thomas Domville demonstrates how to connect to a Windows computer using the Files app on iOS and iPadOS, in order to transfer files over your local network.

To do this, you'll first need to make sure file and printer sharing is enabled on your computer by going to Settings > Network & Internet > Advanced network settings > Advanced sharing settings, and making sure "File and printer sharing" is on for your current connection type, either public or private. To view your computer's internal or "Private" IPV4 address, which you'll need to enter on your iPhone or iPad, either use the ipconfig command line tool as demonstrated in the episode, or locate it via the GUI by going to Settings > Network & Internet > Advanced network settings > Hardware and connection properties.

To connect to the computer from your iPhone or iPad, open the Files app, double-tap the "More" button near the top right of the screen, and choose "Connect to server" from the resulting menu. Enter your computer's IP address in the "Server address" field, and double-tap Connect. You'll then be prompted to authenticate with the username and password you use to log into the computer, after which it should appear in the brows view of the Files app, under the "Shared" heading.

Once connected, you can brows and modify the file and folder structure of the C Drive from the Files app, as well as transfer files from other apps on your device to this location. To disconnect your iPhone or iPad from your computer, focus on it in the brows view of the Files app and choose "eject" from the Actions rotor.

Note: This feature was demonstrated on a computer running Windows 11. While it is available on prior versions of Windows, the process for configuring it may be slightly different.

transcription:
Disclaimer: This transcript is generated by AIKO, an automated transcription service. It is not edited or formatted, and it may not accurately capture the speakers’ names, voices, or content.

Hello and welcome.

My name is Thomas Domville , also known as AnonyMouse.

Now this podcast is going to be for my advanced users out there.

Now I've been in this position for quite a while and I have been thinking about how could I streamline this process.

So are you one of those people that tend to transfer files a lot back and forth from your iPhone or your iOS device to your computer?

If you are, raise your hand.

This might be something for you to think about.

Yes, you do have the option to kind of transfer from your phone to your computer by using a third party service such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or maybe Microsoft OneDrive.

But the problem with that, it can be slow, right?

Or I just don't want to store it up in those surfaces for whatever reason that is.

In my case, I tend to have some very large files and can take some time, especially if you have a slow internet access.

So in other words, anytime I need to transfer something, so I'm essentially sending it up through the internet, through the cloud, store it up there.

So it takes that time to do it and then go on my phone, go through Microsoft OneDrive and go to the drive and pull it back down.

And it's kind of tedious.

I wish it would be more streamlined and most of all more efficient, faster, and get the results done quicker.

Well, I am going to show you how to do this from Windows standpoint.

Yes, the Mac has a great, when you stay in the same ecosystem, they have the file transfer and it's great, but not so much for Windows users.

So I'm going to show you what I do.

And I'm going to show you how to access using the files app on your iOS to connect to your computer on your network.

Yep, we are going to do just that.

We're going to connect to our Windows computer directly and do the transferring back and forth from there.

It's amazing what the native files app can do.

There's a lot of things in within this little package that it can do for you.

Now, the first thing we need to do, we need to take a look at your Windows computer.

So in front of me, I have my Windows computer here.

Now, I am using Windows 11 for my OS.

For those friends out there that are using an earlier version of 11, you may have to do some Google search on some of the things I am going to be showing you today as it's going to look different and how to access the different areas is going to differ as well.

So with that out of the way, first thing we need to do, we need to make sure that your computer has a service or a feature turned on, which is called the file and printer sharing.

Now, this is going to be a kind of a cache 22 because this is my computer and it is at home.

I won't have to worry about this as being an issue.

For example, if your computer is belongs to a school or organization or a company that you work for or you volunteer for, it may be possible that that service is turned off by the IT department.

They may turn this off just simply for security concerns.

So nobody gain access to your computer or whatever not that just could happen and what not, but more times than not, it is already turned on simply because you need to have them access it so they can access your computer when they need to remote into your computer.

So that's why I said most of the time is turned on.

However, before I say any of that, I do want to make sure that you understand that because it's not really technically yours, you may need to ask someone a supervisor or your IT department to see if this is something that is allowable that you are allowed to do.

So with that out of the way, if this is your personal computer, no problem.

So first thing I need to do is I'm going to show you how to find the feature for the file and printer sharing and make sure that is turned on.

From Windows 11, I'm just going to tap on my Win key, search box, edit, type in text, and I'm going to type in Sharing, S-H-A-R-I-N-G, and then enter.

Sharing, enter, advanced network settings, advanced sharing settings, settings, private networks, network discovery button, on.

To activate, press space bar.

Now I'm going to tap a couple of times here until we find the file and print sharing feature.

Set up network connected devices automatically, check box checked, file and printer sharing button, on.

To activate, press space bar.

And there she is, so there's the file and printer sharing, and you can hear for yourself it is turned on.

So that's the first thing out of the way we need to do.

Now I'm going to Alt F4 out of here.

Alt F4, recycle bin, one of 20.

Now this next item we need to find is your IP address.

So there are essentially two different IP address.

There's a private and public.

So the public IP address is what IP you are seeing from outside of the in the internet.

So you have a router and that's on the outside.

That's your public IP.

What we're looking for is your private IP means internally.

What do you use your IP inside of your network?

So in my case, my iPhone is connected to the Wi-Fi and the computer is connected to the Wi-Fi.

So they're in the same network and they're within that internal private IP family.

So I need to know what IP that this computer is.

So I'm going to do this.

There's a number of ways you can obtain your private IP.

Now, in my case, I like to use the command line to issue something called an IP config.

And that allows me to see what my IP address is.

However, I do something a little different here.

I'm going to head to my document folder here.

Windowsy file explorer Thomas dash personal dash file explorer items view multi select list box not selected apps one of ten not selected apps D desktop D documents three of ten.

I'm going to enter here to go to my doctor folder enter documents dash file explorer items view multi select list box not selected audacity.

All right.

So I have already made a text file here.

If you are wanting to use this same technique, go ahead and open up your notepad by doing a Windows plus R and then type in notepad and hit enter.

I'm going to go to the L local IP dot txt 14 of 23.

There's a text file that I've created.

I'm going to show you what's within that text file and what command I am issuing to obtain my IP address.

Enter notepad notepad notepad edit local IP dot txt dash notepad text editor.

Edit.

All right.

So what I have issued here and I typed out is IP config space greater than space and then the file that you want that result to dump him.

The reason I like doing this is because, as you know, if you go to the command line and type in IP config, you'll get lots of results and there can be tons of scrolling and going up and down to find the results that you want.

So what I essentially am telling the window to do is to run command, but dump your results into a particular text file.

So in this case, I'm going to show you what I have in on the line that I've written here.

Misspelled IP config greater local IP results dot txt.

So I have a local IP results dot txt.

So that is where it's going to dump the information that I need to find out the private IP for this computer with that all typed and done.

So I'm going to hit out of here and close it by doing all that for all that for documents dash file explorer items view multi select list box local IP dot txt four slash five slash two thousand twenty four.

OK. So now what we're going to do is I'm going to rename this file to edit local IP dot txt type in text and by issuing an F2 command and now I'm going to go to use the right arrow to make sure I find the dot txt extension period txt.

Once you find that extension, rename the extension from text to bat b a t x t.

So I'm going to delete txt x t blank and put in bat b a t.

Now we're going to hit enter that enter rename dialog.

If you change a file name extension, the file might become unusable.

Are you sure you want to change it?

Yes.

Button to activate press space bar alt plus y I'm going to hit yes enter documents dash file explorer local IP dot bat edit local IP dot bat type in text.

What that does is now it turns into a batch file, which means is it's executable.

So when you hit enter here, it will execute that command that you have placed in the text file.

Now as I mentioned before, there are other ways to get to private IP.

Now once I hit enter on this enter, you're going to hear that it was enter.

Now you're not going to hear anything else.

There's no response after this, but now if it works and it was successful, you are going to find the text file that you implemented in the batch file.

So in my case, it should be local IP results.

Local IP results dot txt 15 of 24.

All right, so we know that it ran successfully and now I am going to hit enter on this to open up the text file notepad notepad edit local IP results dot txt dash notepad text editor edit.

If you've never done this, you can just kind of scroll down.

There are tons of information you can pull from this and IP config has lots of great information that you might need in the future or whatever not.

But in this case, I am looking for something called IPv4.

So I'm going to do control F here, control F, press F6 to go to new notification from Windows notepad pop up, find edit IPv4 type in text.

And now that I typed in IPv4, we're going to hit enter enter.

And once you have hit enter, it should now locate it.

If it didn't work, it'll pop up with an error and let you know they couldn't find it.

So that means possibly that the IP config or the batch file that we ran was not successful for in your case.

So I'm going to hit escape here just to make sure I am on that line here escape text editor edit.

Excellent.

Now I'm going to read that line IPv4 address colon one nine two one six eight one two one three.

So I know that's the correct one.

So we have now our IP address.

One ninety two one sixty eight one two thirteen.

Now keep in mind that will change from very time to time if your computer isn't on all the time.

Each time you start up your computer, what I'm not it may grab a brand new IP address unless that is static.

So more times than not is dynamic.

So it's going to change all the time, meaning when we do the share on our files app on our phone, you may have to check to make sure that's a correct address at that time.

Otherwise if it's a computer that's on all the time, generally you won't have to worry about that.

Now I got my IP address.

We are going to head over to my iPhone and we are going to look for the files app files double tap to open.

Now we are going to open up the files app files.

This is an incredible app.

If you don't use this very often, you should.

If you use if you do a lot of transferring back and forth files is a great app to use.

This is where I can add and access to different services like your iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox and whatever.

You can add a lot of these services to it with the exception here, which we are going to do.

We're going to connect to our Windows computer.

So top right here more button is the more button.

Go ahead and double tap that scan documents button.

Now go to the right.

Connect to server button.

That's the one we're looking for.

I realized that your computer is not really theoretically a server, but it's kind of technically being well, whatever, not as a computer.

So this is where we need to go.

Double tap this server address text field is editing example dot com insertion point at start swipe up or down to select a custom action.

Then double tap to activate.

Use the rotor to access misspelled words.

This is where you're going to insert your IP address.

Now for those that are more advanced and you want to use your computer name, you can do that.

If you use your computer name, then you wouldn't have to enter your specific IP address.

Nonetheless, like I said, there are many ways of doing this, but in this case, we're going to put an IP address here.

I'm going to double tap that make sure is selected.

Insertion point at end.

Excellent.

Now I'm going to put in 192.168.1.213.

Server address text field is editing 192.168.1.213 insertion point at end.

Use the rotor to access misspelled words.

Now that you inserted your IP address or a computer name, top right.

Connect button is the connect button.

Let's go ahead and double tap on that.

Connect cancel button.

Now it was successful because in a way if it didn't detect that computer or the IP address as something that you can connect to, it will pop up as an error.

Now I know it worked because it popped up here and I'm going to swipe to the right and you will hear the following items.

Connect to server.

Next dimmed button.

Where the next button top right is dimmed, we're not quite ready to do this.

Select as heading, guest, selected, registered user.

You have two options, as a guest or a registered user.

So we're going to select as a registered user.

Now this is where the second complication might comes in that you need to know what you signed in with your computer with.

Most cases, if not all, you're signing in with something.

So if you entered a credentials when you sign into your computer or you entered a PIN code or whatever, you should have a username and a password that you're signing in with.

Now for those that receive the computer automatically to you and it just goes straight to the desktop, you are using some sort of a username and password to get onto that computer.

You will need to have that in hand.

With assuming that you do know your username and password for the computer, we can just select on register user.

Otherwise if you select guest, you're not going to gain access to the proper folders that you are wanting to get to.

So, it is by default, you register user, so go to the right, name.

This is where we are going to put in your username, username, text field, double tap to edit, double tap here, insertion point at end, text field.

Now put in your username, Toma, character mode, insertion point at end.

Use the rotor to access misspelled words.

Now we entered my username for my computer here.

Now go to the right here, password, password, optional, secure text field, double tap to edit.

If you are using a password, in my case I am using a password, double tap this, insertion point at end.

Now enter your password, password, secure text field, is editing, 13 characters.

Alright so I've entered my password, let's go to the top right hand corner of your phone here.

Next button, and now the next button should be undimmed and double tap that.

Next browse back button, and we should have success because I heard the browse is now at the top left and there is a back button.

Let's go ahead and do that.

Let's go to the top left and hit the browse back, double tap, more button.

Now if you called we had that more when we added our server.

Now if you go to the right here and go ahead and find the location header.

Browse, heading, search, search field, dictate, button, locations, button, heading, expanded, double tap to collapse, actions available.

Now typically this is where you find all your services, your iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive.

This is where those services live and that you would find that.

However, want to go to the first heading here, now set your order to heading and what we're looking for is share.

Favorites, button, heading, shared, button, heading, expanded, double tap to collapse.

Voila, now we're here, if that is collapsed, go ahead and do one finger double tap to expand that and now go to the right here, 192.168.1.213, ejectable, button, actions available.

Voila, that is where our connection has been established, yes, voila.

So what I'm going to do here to show you how this works and how quick it does, this is just an example.

So I created a Walt Disney World, I recorded a ride that I did for my archival purposes.

So I'm going to move that particular wall file over to my phone to do various settings and changes and things like that.

So I'm going to use audio memo for example.

So let me find my audio memo app here, app switcher, audio memos, active, swipe up with three fingers to close the app, actions available, audio memos.

Now you can use any app for that matter, anything that allows you to import or share through a share sheet that you can import or send files back and forth.

So it doesn't have to be audio memo, it could be like I have tons of photos I want to move over to my computer, this would be a great example.

You go to your photo app, go to the image or video that you want and open that up, you'll see the image or video and the bottom left is your share and then you can share that to your files and then you have access to your computer from there.

So there are a lot of things you could do or I know a lot of folks out there like to listen to a bunch of audio books, whatever not that you have downloaded yourself and that can contain a lot of mp3s or whatever not and you want to import that into say book player or something like that or voice dream reader, you want to import all those files, you have a quicker access to do that by going through files and through your computer.

So many different ways to do this.

So in this case, I'm going to go ahead but I'm going to bring in a WAV file that is on my computer.

Add button, add alert, create a new memo, button, import from music, button, import from trash can, button, import from files app, button.

So that's the one I want, I'm going to import from the files app, double tap that.

Book player, folder, one item.

All right, so it just depends where it dumps you, you never know exactly where it dumps you.

So in this case, it dumped me into my iCloud so I don't want that.

I'm going to go back out until I get to the main menu part of the files app.

So top left, browse back button, which you should hear the browse back button.

Just keep tapping that, browse cancel button until you find the cancel button.

Now this is where you can swipe to the right, find the location service, locations, button, heading, expanded, double tap to collapse.

Now use your rotor to select headings and go down to shared, favorites, button, shared, button, heading, expanded.

Now let's go to the right here, 192.168.1.213, ejectable, button, double tap this, users, folder actions available.

But the method I'm showing you, you're sharing the actual drive.

So it goes to, in this case, my C drive.

So if you know how to navigate through the directory, go ahead and find what you want to do.

So in my case, I'm gonna go to the user folder, find Thomas and go to my document folder.

Toma folder, at Toma, users, back button, Toma, action icons, button, cancel button, search, search, dictate button, contacts, documents, folder.

From here, double tap to go into my document folder.

Documents, actions menu, button, icons, button, cancel button, search, search, dictate button, audacity, folder.

And we heard that particular folder, when we were on my computer, it lives in there.

So I'm gonna go there.

I'm looking for my Disney in the Dark here.

Disney in the Dark, Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway WAV, audio, four slash five slash.

So there is that particular WAV file that I want to import, just double tap that.

Selected, Disney in the Dark, Mickey.

And in this case, you will have to do the various forms.

So, open button.

Most of the time, there should be an open button at the top right, double tap that.

Open, selected, Disney in the Dark.

Audio memos, back button.

And now it should be imported.

Now you're gonna notice quite a bit of difference in speed.

It just goes a lot quicker than if you were going through your internet.

Even if I have a pretty fast internet, if you're talking about a good deal size of files that you're importing, you're gonna notice a big difference too.

This is a great way to bypass the third party cloud service.

So what a great option and way to do this.

So I hope this helps you to understand what I've done here and how to use your Windows computer to open that up, to do a sharing of your drive.

And then I'm using the files app to access my computer.

Now, before I head out of here, I wanna show you something.

Let's go back to the files app itself.

App switcher, audio memos, files, active.

Files, drop box, button.

And then let's go back to the shared area.

Recently deleted, button, shared, button, heading 192.168.1.213, ejectable, button, actions available.

If you are done and you do not want to keep that as shared anymore, just do a swipe up.

Eject.

And that'll eject it.

That means it will disconnect it, double tap that.

And that will eject or disconnect to your computer and voila.

And now you can reconnect it at a different time or you can just keep it on there if your IP address stays the same.

Otherwise, if it keeps changing around each time you reboot your computer, it might change and you'll get an error and you'll have to eject that and then re-add a new shared item to the files.

All right, well, that is going to be it.

My name is Thomas Domville , also known as AnonyMouse.

Until next time.