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Offline Photo Storage (backup photos and videos to external storage, for iPhone/iPad)     www.apple.com/shop/...  AliExpress: "mini card reader iphone" With this app, you can easily copy your photos and videos from the iOS Photos app to an ORDINARY memory card (or an ORDINARY USB flash drive). From memory cards, photos can be copied to a desktop PC/laptop, or you can use your memory card for storing your photos and videos. All files are copied. For Live Photo, a photo file and a video file are copied. For edited photos and videos, the edited file and the original file are copied (can be turned off). For series, all photos from the series are copied. No doubt, iCloud is a great and convenient service, but if iCloud does not suit you, or your photos and videos have so much importance that you must back them up to your own storage media, even if you already use iCloud, then this application is for you. 
An external storage device must have only a single data partition, and it must be formatted as APFS, APFS encrypted, macOS Extended (HFS+), exFAT (FAT64), FAT32, or FAT. That is, any ordinary memory card or flash drive will work "out of the box". To change the formatting of a storage device, use a Mac or PC. Source of information: Connect external storage devices to iPhone (support.apple.com/...). 
IMPORTANT!!! If you have an iOS version earlier than 15.3.1, DO NOT use memory cards or flash drives with exFAT format. Because after copying files, reconnecting the memory card and moving through folders, the files disappear along with the folders. This was verified using the iOS Photos app and the iOS Files app. Only those files that were copied from the iPhone disappear. This is probably an iOS bug. Use memory cards with FAT32 format. IMPORTANT!!! Check the copied files ONLY after reconnecting the memory card or better using a desktop PC/laptop. IMPORTANT!!! Be sure to check ALL copied files. At least make sure that large thumbnails can be created for all files in the file manager of the operating system (for iOS, this is the built-in "Files" app). IMPORTANT!!! If you will be converting HEIC files to JPG, do not delete the original HEIC files. IMPORTANT!!! The application does not delete photos and videos that have not been copied (by default). Therefore, in order to avoid accidentally deleting photos or videos that have not been copied, delete photos and videos using this application. IMPORTANT!!! When the app has restricted access to photos and videos (that is, when the app has access only to selected photos and videos), there is no access to the list of albums created by the user. Therefore in this case user albums are not written to the file name. To test adding album names to the file name, you can select a screenshot added to the "Favorites" album. When copying, all file metadata (date created, location, etc.) is preserved. IF THE FILE'S CREATION AND MODIFICATION DATES HAS CHANGED (this should be checked ONLY after reconnecting the memory card OR USING ANOTHER DEVICE), TRY USING A DIFFERENT MEMORY CARD OR TRY REFORMATTING THE MEMORY CARD USING A DIFFERENT FORMAT. Even the way your photos are organized into albums is preserved. At the same time, you can select and view photos from a specific album in any operating system WITHOUT INSTALLING additional apps or software. It is possible by adding the album names to the file names. This way, photo and video files from a specific album are easily searchable in the OS's built-in file manager.     
You can select albums that do not need to be added to the file name. For example, you can exclude adding [Videos], [Live Photos], [Hidden], [Bursts] and others albums to the file name. You can customize the rules for organizing photo and video albums into folders. Album folders are created inside year folders. This allows photos and videos to be organized into folders by year and by album at the same time. Read more about the rules for organizing photo and video albums into folders below.    
The file name also contains the date when that photo or video was created (if the photo or video has been edited, then the date of creation of the original is used). This insures that the file's creation date won't be overwritten and guarantees that photo or video files can always be sorted by the date they were created. When a photo is edited in the iOS Photos app, the original is not changed, but backup files are created instead. After copying, these backup files have the same name as the original (with some minor differences to distinguish between the original and the edited photo or video), which ensures that all files related to the same photo or video are located next to each other in the folder when you sort your files by name. Additional files are created even if you only change the orientation of the photo or video. Therefore, take a photo or video immediately in the desired orientation. Of course, you can turn off copying the original file of the edited photos or videos in the app settings. If you choose to write the old photo or video name to the new file name in the app settings, then the old photo or video name will be added to the end of the new file name in parentheses (for example, "2021-11-30_12.47.52_[Album1][Album2][Album3] (IMG_5314).JPG"). 
To copy photos and videos to a memory card, you need a special adapter sold in Apple stores (MJYT2ZM/A). You can check out the app without memory cards (read more below). www.apple.com/shop/... You can buy a much smaller adapter at a much lower price (10 times cheaper). AliExpress: "mini card reader iphone" But non-Apple adapters are often not recognized the first time and need to be reconnected. Additionally, memory cards are not inserted well into them and can be broken, and at any time Apple can prohibit their usage. Based on this, a non-original adapter is only suitable for testing this app and storing photos and videos this way. There are also USB adapters (MD821ZM/A and MK0W2ZM/A) designed to connect a camera to an iPhone/iPad.  MD821ZM/A  MK0W2ZM/A  www.apple.com/shop/... But when you try to connect a flash drive with the MD821ZM/A adapter, the "Cannot Use Accesssory. Mass Storage Device: This accesssory requires too much power." message appears. And when using the MK0W2ZM/A adapter, you must connect the adapter to the charger (plugging it into a desktop computer's USB port will not work) so that there is a connection with the flash drive and such error messages as with the first adapter do not appear again. That's why using memory card adapters is way more convenient than MK0W2ZM/A. In addition, the Lightning port of the MK0W2ZM/A adapter can be used only for power. The app's main function is to store photos and videos entirely independently of your desktop PC/laptop and the internet connection. Therefore, if you have no backup on your PC/ laptop or in iCloud, then you MUST backup your photos and videos ON SEVERAL MEMORY CARDS (AT LEAST FOUR). For this purpose, the app calculates the number of copies for each photo and video. And you are allowed to delete only those photos and videos that have been copied the required number of times. This feature can be disabled. It is important not only with the sufficient number of backup memory cards, but also their reliability and safety. It is better if your memory cards are from different manufacturers (the ones that are reliable and have their own production: Toshiba (Kioxia), SanDisk, Samsung, but BEWARE OF FAKES), so that you avoid "putting all your eggs in one basket", and if they are bought in a good store (to reduce the likelihood of buying a fake). In addition to using memory cards from different manufacturers, it is desirable that the memory cards be formatted using at least two different formats. This will insure against possible iOS bugs when working with memory cards. If you do not plan to hide your memory cards in a secure place, you should buy microSD memory cards with an SD adapter because small memory cards (microSD) can be easily lost. Moreover, the MJYT2ZM/A adapter is specifically designed for SD cards. You can buy regular SD cards, but the number of devices where you can use them is more limited. Of course, you must store your memory cards in different places. To try the app out, you can use the app folder for copying your files. You don't need to do anything to select this folder, as this copy location is selected by default. Select a small number of photos (it's good if they are stored in an album, or even better - in several albums at once) and copy them. Go to the iOS Files app, find the Offline Photo Storage app folder, and appreciate the way your photo and video files are named. If the copied photos were part of an album, then the file names should contain the name of this album in square brackets. This text in the file name can help you quickly find all files related to the album of interest, even in the Files app (iOS). You can check this out by writing the name of the album (without square brackets) in the search field of the Files app (on some memory cards, search does not work). Also, the Files app can be used for viewing and searching for photos by album name on memory cards connected to your iPhone with an adapter. The Files app has a bug (hopefully fixed soon) where the search may not find all files that match the search string. If the search does not show any files that are definitely there, check your iOS settings ("Settings > Siri & Search > Files app", "Show App in Search" must be enabled, "Show Content in Search" must be enabled).     
If you only need to export your photos and videos to a desktop PC/laptop without losing information about the albums and with the file names showing "Date created" ("YYYY-MM-DD_HH.MM.SS_[album1][album2][album3]"), then you don't need a memory card adapter. Select photos in batches (if your iPhone doesn't have enough free space), for example, by years, and copy them to this app's folder. In addition, if the photos are moved to a Windows device, you need to convert the HEIC files to JPG using the function available in this application. Then transfer the copied files from the application folder to your Windows desktop PC/laptop using iTunes. On Windows OS, you can search for photos and videos related to a certain album in the Windows folder in the same way as in the iOS Files app. So, including album names in the file name is a very convenient solution that helps you easily select files related to a certain album in all operating systems. However, it is important that the same photo or video is not added to a large number of albums AT THE SAME TIME (approximately up to 10-20 albums, depending on the length of the album titles). Because filename length has a character limit. On iOS, macOS, and Linux, a file name must not exceed 255 characters. On Windows, the entire file path, including the file name, must not exceed 255 characters (1024 characters on iOS and macOS, on Linux there may be more). That is, in Windows OS, the more folders with long titles a file path is contained, the shorter the file name can be. But even with this limitation, a file name can easily have enough place for 10 average album titles. I'd like to emphasize once again that there can be several hundred albums, the main thing is that the same photo or video should be added only to 10-20 albums. Album titles can not have characters prohibited in file names ("/", "\", "|", ":", """, "<", ">", "*", "?") and "[", "]". The app will remove them from the album title. If you have access to macOS, you can encrypt your memory card (WITHOUT installing any third-party applications). To do this, encrypt your SD card in Disk Utility. After that, access to the data on the memory card can only be obtained if you know the password. When connecting an encrypted SD card to an iPhone, you first need to unlock it using the iOS Files app, and then you will be able to select the encrypted card as the copy destination. Photos and videos can only be copied to a folder named OfflinePhotoStorage. If a folder with a different name is selected, or no folder is selected, the app searches for the OfflinePhotoStorage folder in the selected location. If the OfflinePhotoStorage folder is not found, it is created, and the files are copied there. In other words, you do NOT need to create a folder named OfflinePhotoStorage yourself because it is automatically created the first time you copy files. For subsequent copying, select either the location where the OfflinePhotoStorage folder is located or the OfflinePhotoStorage folder itself. In the OfflinePhotoStorage folder, the copied files are sorted into folders by year. IMPORTANT!!! The app has a function to search for photos and videos that have already been copied to the SD card. After you selected photos and videos as well as the location for copying, the app checks the copy destination (a folder named OfflinePhotoStorage) for files that match the files selected for copying. If it finds identical files, the files that already exist in the destination folder are not copied. For this function to work, it is important that you do not change the location of the copied files, their names and extensions. You can change (edit, add, delete) only the album titles contained in the file name (any text in square brackets) and any text in parentheses (which can be added). It is also important not to make changes to the files themselves. Therefore, if you want to edit a photo, make its copy with a different name and edit it. If an album has been changed for an already copied photo or video in the iOS Photos app, then you will be prompted to change the album in the name of the already copied file. If you add captions to photos and videos in the iOS "Photos" app, these captions are written to separate text files (a separate file for each photo or video with a caption). These files have the same name as the associated photos and videos, only the extension is different. Therefore, when sorting files by name, they will always be next to their associated photos and videos. In iOS, there can be several files for the same photo, for example, in Live Photo there will be 2 files: an photo file and a video file. In addition, when you edit photos and videos, the original file is not changed, but an edited file and another file with the .plist extension containing edit information are created instead. This allows edits to be undone. By default, all files are copied, but if you don't need the original photos for the edited photos, you can disable their copying in the app settings. If you intend to view your photos in Windows, you need to convert HEIC files to JPG, since Windows does not support the HEIC format. The conversion function looks for HEIC files in the copy destination and creates a copy of the photo in JPG format, while the original HEIC file is NOT deleted and remains unchanged. You can convert not only those HEIC files copied by the app, but also any other ones. Do not delete the original HEIC files!!! In addition, Windows does not support orientation information recorded in photo and video files that were created on the iPhone (iPhone writes data to the file regardless of camera orientation, that is, it does not flip the image if the camera is upside down, but only makes a mark on how to rotate the photo or video while viewing). Therefore, in Windows, photos and videos may be oriented incorrectly. To avoid this, when taking photos and videos, keep the iPhone only in the orientation in which the orientation of the iPhone coincides with the orientation of the camera. For the rear camera, this orientation is as follows: 
For the front (selfie) camera: 
Rules for organizing albums of photos and videos into foldersYou can customize the rules for organizing photo and video albums into folders. Album folders are created inside year folders. This allows photos and videos to be organized into folders by year and by album at the same time.
• The "Offline Photo Storage" app can generate rules based on albums and folders created by the user in the "Photos" app. To do this, firstly, the "Offline Photo Storage" app must be allowed access to all photos and videos. Secondly, the "Offline Photo Storage" app should not have any album organization rules. Thirdly, go to the app settings and go to the list of organization rules. If the first two conditions are met, album organization rules will be generated. After generating the rules, you need to enable and edit the necessary rules, delete unnecessary rules, check and correct the priority of the rules. The priority of the rules is changed by dragging the list cell above or below.   
After that, you need to save the changes by touching the "Done" button. 
Editing the rules for organizing albums can be done in the app, but if you need to edit long combinations of albums with a deep folder nesting level, then it is more convenient to immediately save the generated rules (without editing). To do this, tap the "Done" button. The "OrganizingAlbums.txt" file with the generated album organization rules will be saved in the "Offline Photo Storage" app folder. Then transfer the file "OrganizingAlbums.txt" to the desktop computer/laptop, edit the rules in the file "OrganizingAlbums.txt" in the desktop computer/laptop. After that, replace the old "OrganizingAlbums.txt" file in the app folder with the edited one. The app will need to be restarted. The "OrganizingAlbums.txt" file can also be edited in iOS without installing any additional apps. To do this, open the "OrganizingAlbums.txt" file in the "Files" app, select and copy the rules, open the "Notes" app and paste the copied rules into an empty note, edit the organization rules, tap the note's export button, find and tap "Save to Files", find the "Offline Photo Storage" app folder and save a note in this folder using the file name "OrganizingAlbums". The old "OrganizingAlbums.txt" file must be replaced. The app will need to be restarted. • The "Offline Photo Storage" app generates rules based on albums and folders created by the user in the "Photos" app. But you can add organization rules for albums that are automatically created by the "Photos" app (Favorites, Videos, Screen Recordings, Selfies, and others). • Album name must be between square brackets. • The folder name (local path from the year folder) must begin and end with a slash "/". • You can write multiple subfolders in a folder name. For example: /Folder/Subfolder/Subsubfolder/. Folder nesting level is unlimited. • Any character can be used between album name and folder name, but it is better to use " - ", " -> ", " > ", " => ", " → ". • If you add an underscore "_" to the beginning of a folder name, then, when sorting normally by name, the folder will be at the top of the list of files on any operating system (even on iOS in the "Files" app). This is important when not all photos and videos are organized into album folders in year folders.
• Text after the double slash "//" and up to the end of the line is ignored. • The word "Off" ("off", "OFF") at the beginning of the line is used to disable the rule, with the option to enable the rule in the application. • Album names can be combined using a plus "+". For example: • If different albums need to be copied to the same folder, then the album names can be separated by commas in one rule. For example: • If the album name is in more than one rule, then the rule that is located below has priority. For example: If a photo is added to several albums (in "Album1" and "Album2") and the rule for combining albums is not used, then the position of the rules determines which of these albums is the main one. For example: • For photos and videos that are not added to any album, or that are added to albums for which you do not want to create a separate folder, you can create a rule using the word "Others " ("others ", "OTHERS "). For example: • When all files in the year folder are organized into folders and subfolders, to see the thumbnails of all photos and videos at once in chronological order, use the search of the file manager of the operating system. Just do a search for the year you are interested in.  
• The rules for organizing photo and video albums into folders also work when renaming and sorting files located in the "RenamingAndSorting" folder. How to assign an album to individual files or to all files in a folder in the "RenamingAndSorting" folder, read below. If you want to organize already copied photos and videos into subfolders by albums, then this can be done by moving (these photos and videos should not be in the old place) the already copied photos and videos to the "RenamingAndSorting" folder. Renaming and sorting photos and videos from other sourcesThe app can rename and sort into folders by year photos and videos that have already been moved to external media or desktop computer. For example, photos and videos taken with a conventional camera, or old photos stored on external media or a desktop computer. To do this, you need to copy your photos and videos to the "RenamingAndSorting" folder, which should be located in the "OfflinePhotoStorage" folder on the external media, then you need to connect the external media to the iPhone/iPad (or you can use the folder of this app in the "Files" app). In this case, photos and videos can be located inside subfolders. You need to enable this feature in the app settings. 
To start renaming and sorting, you need to select the "OfflinePhotoStorage" folder with the "RenamingAndSorting" folder into which the files were copied as the place to copy files. If this folder is already selected, then this must be done again. 
The date and time when photos and videos were created is determined using several parameters. If the file name contains a substring with date and time written in YYYYMMDDHHMM(SS) or similar format (e.g. "ImageYYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS.jpg", "YYYY-MM-DD at HH.MM.SS.jpg", "YYYYMMDDHHMM.jpg", etc.), then the date and time from the file name is used. If the photo name does not have information about the date and time of creation, or the format for recording the date and time is not clear to the app, then information from Exif, TIFF, IPTC is used (there is no such information for video). If in Exif, TIFF, IPTC there is also no information about the date and time when the photo was created, and if the video file name does not contain information about the date and time when the video was taken, the source of information about the date and time of creation of photos and videos is the date of creation of the file and the date of modification of the file content, and the oldest date is selected from these dates. Recording to the file name of albums and comments is supported. If the folder name contains text in square brackets (for example, a camera or smartphone model), then all files in this folder will have the same text in square brackets in the new file name. And if in this folder there is a subfolder with a name containing other text in square brackets, then all files located in this subfolder will have the text from the folder name and from the subfolder name in the file name (see the example below). If the file or folder name contains text in parentheses, that text will be appended to the end of the new filename in parentheses. If the app settings choose to write the old filename to the new filename, then the entire old filename will be appended to the end of the new filename in parentheses. If the format of the date, time and other information in the file name is the same as in the names created by this app, then the file name does not change (however, an album may be added from the folder name). Therefore, a file name like "2017-09-20_11.45.09_ "/ OfflinePhotoStorage / RenamingAndSorting / (Camera1) / P4300008.JPG" "/ OfflinePhotoStorage / RenamingAndSorting / (Camera1) / P4300009.JPG" "/ OfflinePhotoStorage / RenamingAndSorting / Folder1 / P1160767.JPG" "/ OfflinePhotoStorage / RenamingAndSorting / [Album1] / SubFolder / DSCN0002.JPG" "/ OfflinePhotoStorage / RenamingAndSorting / Folder2 [Album2] / IMG_0852.jpg" "/ OfflinePhotoStorage / RenamingAndSorting / Folder2 [Album2] / IMG_0853.jpg" "/ OfflinePhotoStorage / RenamingAndSorting / Folder2 [Album2] / SubFolder [Album3] / IMG_1659.jpg" With disabled writing old filename to new filename: "/ OfflinePhotoStorage / RenamingAndSorting / Folder4 / IMG_0070 [Album4].JPG" "/ OfflinePhotoStorage / RenamingAndSorting / Folder3 / SubFolder / IMG_0073.JPG" "/ OfflinePhotoStorage / RenamingAndSorting / (comment1) IMG_6572 (comment2) text (comment3 (subcomment)).jpg" IMPORTANT!!! After renaming and sorting photos and videos, the dates of creation and modification of files (and of course all other metadata) should not change. If the dates of creation or modification of files (or other metadata) have changed, you need to find out at what stage the changes occur (perhaps the changes occur when the operating system copies the files to the "RenamingAndSorting" folder, before the app moves these files). If changes appear after renaming and moving files with this app, be sure to let me know. IMPORTANT!!! When preparing data about files located in the "RenamingAndSorting" folder, the app looks for duplicates of the same photo or video and checks in advance for the presence of the same photo or video in the folder where the photo or video should be moved. This check is simplified, fast, efficient, but NOT one hundred percent accurate. Therefore, there is a possibility (very small) of error and it is important to check the correctness of this check if the app has concluded that the file is a duplicate or the file already exists in the target folder. After renaming and moving files, duplicates and files already in the target folder remain in the "RenamingAndSorting" folder, which simplifies verification. When searching the "OfflinePhotoStorage" folder for files already copied from the "Photos" app, there is also a possibility (very small) of error. But, in this case, the error will be easily detected when deleting photos and videos from the "Photos" app using this application. Because the photo or video will not be copied, and this app does not delete photos and videos from the "Photos" app that have not been copied the required number of times (by default). Therefore, to delete photos and videos from the "Photos" app, use this app. Privacy PolicyThe application DOES NOT collect any data at all, and especially confidential ones. The app doesn't send messages even if the app crashes. Therefore, if you do not inform me about frequent app crashes by email, I won't know about it and I won't fix the bug. The app may only need an internet connection when making in-app purchases to unlock locked features, and to communicate with iCloud servers.
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