Starting with the iPhone 15 series (and continuing with the iPhone 16), Apple replaced with venerable Lightning port with a USB-C port. In addition to continue using the same class of accessories that were supported with Lighting, on the Pro models Apple also added support for connecting a USB-C memory drive and shooting ProRAW video directly onto it, a feature useful for these large files that quickly eat up storage space on the phone, and enhancing pro workflows like copying the video onto a computer for editing.
Photographers may also want to take advantage of the same workflow – RAW files can also quickly eat up storage, and you may not want to clutter up your personal photo library with photos of an event and then have to offload them onto your computer using clunky photo download software. Unfortunately, the Camera app on the iPhone does not allow for this.
But with Photon, you can!
Just go into Settings, Capture, and scroll down to turn on External Storage support. Now, when a USB-C drive is connected, a USB icon will show up in the photo preview thumbnail, and your photos will be saved directly to the drive when shot! You can still preview the photos inside of Photon, or view them in the Files app.
Supported file systems for the USB-C drive include APFS, HFS+, ExFAT and FAT32. This is in contrast to the Camera app’s ProRAW shooting feature which limits its support for USB-C drives to a single file system (APFS).
A slow USB drive may reduce how fast you can shoot photos, especially when shooting in RAW formats. Get our free tool REC Speed Test to verify how fast your drive can save data!