IPhone – Copying one video from Mac to Iphone without syncing

data synchronizationiphoneitunes

I need to copy a video file from my Macbook to my Iphone 4. The Iphone is not synced to this Macbook but to my home computer, but I'm away from home, and I don't want to sync it to the Macbook because it will wipe everything else in the phone.

I could copy the file from the Macbook to Dropbox and download it to the Iphone from there, but my net connection here is pretty slow. Isn't there any way to copy the file from the Mac to the Iphone without syncing?

I'm using OS X 10.8.2 in the Macbook, iOS 5.1.1 on the Iphone and iTunes 10.6.3.

Best Answer

You can use iTunes to move files directly without a sync over USB.

  1. Attach your iPhone, iPod or iPad with the datacable to your the Mac.
  2. In iTunes, in the top right corner, click on your device. In my case it's an iPad.

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  3. Now go the the 'Apps' tab and scroll down to 'File Sharing'

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  4. Choose the program you want to sent your file to

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  5. Click on the 'Add' bottom in the bottom right

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The newer versions of Dropbox app supports syncing from their servers and local WiFi syncing over a LAN so you can experiment with this if you don't want to try iTunes. Apple's documentation can be found here. There are also third party tools that sync files, but for one file it's hard to justify downloading anything and just use iTunes for the task.