You have connected your iOS device (e.g. iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) with the lightening cable and are ready to copy photos and videos that you took on your device to your Windows 10 computer. However, upon opening Windows Explorer and pasting the files to your designated location, you receive the following error:
Device is unreachable.
To solve this error when copying files from your iPhone or other device to your PC/computer running Windows 10, here are steps to follow:
- Disconnect your iPhone/iPad from your computer
- Go to Settings on your iOS device
- Open Photos and scroll to the bottom
- Under ‘Transfer to Mac or PC’, chang efrom Automatic to Keep Originals (“Automatically transfer photos and videos in a compatible format, or always transfer the original file without checking for compatibility.”)
Now connect again the device to the Windows 10 computer and copy/paste the files again; it should work fine now!
Thanks!!
Bravo, merci
It converts video to audio when you download.
This sucks!
Thanks man, this did the trick.
Thank you so much it’s working
Thank you so much!
Did not work for me. Can’t even open the files using the phone as an external drive. This has never happened before, and I haven’t done anything differently from what I normally do when taking photos.
This is exactly what’s happening to me :(
I am having the same problem and it’s never happened to me either. no matter whose “fix” i follow it does not work and the computer PC is not recognizing the phone being plugged in.
You have made my day…lost too many photos over the years and was beginning to stress..Thank you
This trick only works when the phone is syncing with iTunes. Then, the error reappears after the process is finished.
Great!! thanks!
I was very much frustrated before seeing your article. Thanks a lot.
I have tried that as it looked like a different suggestion to all the others I had found. (Thanks)
I’m running IOS 13.6 with Win10 v18363 with iTunes from the Microsoft store. After getting nearly 80% of a 832 photos transferred, (much better than before) it stopped again with the error “A device attached to the system is not functioning.”
My PC has always been so reliable and has done this successfully so many times before and with the “Automatic” transfer setting, that I am sure it is still a Windows driver or iTunes issue. It would be great to see a solid general fix come out from Apple or Microsoft.
F I N A L L Y
What a sweat and nightmares costed me this.
Thank you so much. One single tap and away all my stress haha
Keep up the good work
greetz Joffrey Teusink from the Netherlands
Thomas you are the Man! My headache is gone!
Thanks for your share!
This worked! Thank you so much!
Thanks, that did it. I’m free of the Apple prison. haha
Thank you!! Finally a solution that works and it’s so fast that I have to double check to make sure it transferred all the photos. And even that I have to convert from HEIC to JPEG, at least I’ve got all my photos backed up!
Thank you!
Thanks! I had to redo this fix after applying IOS 14!
Thank you so much for this solution! I’ve been fighting this problem forever. This cured the problem, saving much frustration.
This means that the files will be saved as HEIC photos, however, once they are on the computer. PCs can’t open HEIC files. If one has a bunch of photos, converting them is not efficient whatsoever, so one is back to the same problem.
@ Sylvie: True, but there is a (partial?) solution described here: https://www.howtogeek.com/345504/how-to-open-heic-files-on-windows-or-convert-them-to-jpeg/. With HEIF Image Extensions installed HEIC files can be opened and CopyTrans HEIC seems to allow for conversion of HEIC files also bulk.
Thanks, it worked for my iPhone SE 2020!
Cheers mate appeared to be the problem! No more errors
Thank you very much sir!!! :D
iPhone SE and Windows 10. this worked for about 2 minutes, but now I get “We can’t open this file” when trying to open a photo and it says “The device is unreachable” when I try to move a photo into another folder.
Also, separate issue, I took about ~100 photos yesterday of clients home/properties. Today, when I plugged in my iphone, only ~20-30 photos showed up on Windows (I have a total of 300+ photos on my phone from the past 6 years). As I troubleshooted issues, unplugging and plugging back into the PC, less and less photos are showing up. I’m down to 12. I’m so confused and don’t understand what the heck is going on. I tried connecting to itunes, NADA. Now I’m here. Again, the solution above helped me move some of the 12 photos/vids over for about 2 minutes, then back to errors and I can’t even open them.
Any advice and where to start next? My work-around solution is to email myself 4-5 photos at a time, which is not productive :/
switch to android phone. i think there is no other option. I am trying since Feb 2021 but all in vain
Thank you – this worked! Keep Originals was already checked on my phone, so I checked Automatic, and then checked Keep Originals again, and that did the trick. So grateful for your help!
SOLVED: Appareantly after switching from automatic > original and back and forth wasn’t working. But, apparently I had 1 or 2 corrupted files that were causing the phone to disconnect from the PC. I hope this piece of info help you a little bit.
Don’t know how you figured that out but it worked. Thanks much. Older ipad had no problems. Ipad air 4th gen was all over the place on file transfer.
Your a legend!
This is an issue of driver working on Windows 8+ (including Windows 10).
I keep Windows 7 installed on a separate volume just for copying photos & videos from my iPhone. Yes, I keep the whole operating system installed on my machine just for that. All other proposed ‘solutions’ don’t work in a common case: e.g., copying 50 GB fails numerous times on different files event with ‘keep originals’ option turned on. Windows
simply does its job, no matter ‘keep originals’ or ‘convert automatically’ is chosen in iOS settings.