Photos or Videos not Showing

iOS lets you give an app Full Access to your library or Limited Access to only selected items. With Limited Access, Simple Transfer only sees the photos you picked when permission was granted.

To transfer everything: iOS Settings → Simple Transfer → Photos → Full Access.

If iCloud Photos with Optimized Storage is on, the iPhone may hold a smaller preview while the original lives in iCloud. Simple Transfer needs the original to transfer, so the phone has to download it first.

Before a big transfer, plug into power and stay on fast WiFi for a while so the iPhone can pre-download originals. For a single stuck item: open it in the Photos app, wait until it fully loads, then return to Simple Transfer.

Some albums are smart albums, shared albums, or cloud-managed views. They may not behave like a normal local album. If a specific album looks empty or wrong, check whether the same files appear under Recents.

Check the Recently Deleted album in Photos. iOS keeps deleted items there for ~30 days before permanent removal. Note that albums are references to the same photo, so deleting from Recents removes the item from every album it appeared in.