What it picks up.
Every photo, every clip, every screen recording — anything the Pixel treats as a captured file. SyncShot reads the phone once and copies what it finds, regardless of format or which Google Photos folder the gallery has filed it in.
- Photos
- Everything the camera shoots — JPEG, HEIC, RAW (DNG) when the Pro mode is on — pulled at full resolution. The computational output the Pixel is known for is just a JPEG or HEIC on disk; SyncShot moves it like any other file.
- Video
- Standard 4K, slow-motion, time-lapse, the cinematic clips from newer Pixels. Long takes copy in a single pass with progress you can watch.
- Captures
- Screen recordings, screenshots, downloaded media, Magic Eraser edits saved back to the gallery — copied alongside the rest, treated as Pixel media like any other file.
- Metadata
- Timestamps, location, orientation, and the technical EXIF data the camera wrote — preserved as the file moves from phone to destination.
Where it sends.
One source, many destinations — and SyncShotreads the Pixel once, then fans the same files out to every place you chose. Pick one. Pick five. The phone doesn't wake up for each one.
- Internal disk
- Your Mac's own drive. The fastest target — usually first in the chain so the slower destinations can feed from it in the background.
- External drives
- USB-C and Thunderbolt SSDs, spinning HDDs, anything macOS mounts. Multiple drives at once if your shoot demands it.
- Network storage
- Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS, plain SMB shares. SyncShot writes over the network without blocking the local copy or slowing the phone read.
- Cloud
- S3 and S3-compatible buckets (Wasabi, R2, MinIO), Google Drive, Dropbox, Azure Blob. Same job, different destination — uploaded in parallel.
How it works.
- 01
Connect the phone
Cable in. Trust the Mac if it asks, and set the USB mode to file transfer when the Pixel prompts. SyncShot sees it as a source the moment macOS does — no driver, no companion app.
- 02
Choose destinations
Pick every place this shoot belongs. Save the set as a workflow if you'll use it again — next time it's one click.
- 03
Hit start
SyncShot reads the Pixel once and writes to every destination in parallel. The fastest disk finishes first; cloud uploads keep going in the background.
- 04
Trust the report
Every byte is hash-checked end to end. When the job finishes you get a report — what was copied, where it landed, every verification mark. The byte that left the phone is the byte that arrived.
Pixel, in detail.
Pixel 6, 7, 7 Pro, 8, 8 Pro, 9, 9 Pro — the whole modern run. Stills come as JPEG, HEIC on Pixel 8 and newer, and DNG when Pro mode is on. Video runs H.264, H.265, and HDR10+ on the newer bodies. What is distinctive is that Google Add Ons write extra metadata — Magic Eraser edit history stays attached to the file — and byte-for-byte copies keep every bit of it intact.
One quirk shapes real transfer time. Pixel bodies cap MTP at USB 2.0 speeds even over USB-C, and no cable changes that; the phone chip is the limit. Plan for around 20 MB/s, not the USB-C figure on the box. For large offloads, enable USB Debugging and pull over ADB — it consistently beats MTP on Pixels.
Common questions.
- 01
Does SyncShot work with every Pixel?
If macOS mounts your Pixel — through Android File Transfer, Finder, or any MTP-aware tool — SyncShot can read it. Pixel 6 and newer are the well-trodden path; older Pixels work the same way if they still mount.
- 02
Can it copy to my external drive and my NAS at the same time?
Yes. Pick as many destinations as you want — internal disk, external SSD, NAS, S3-compatible bucket, Google Drive — and SyncShot reads the Pixel once and feeds every destination in parallel.
- 03
What happens to the originals on the phone after a copy?
By default the originals stay on the Pixel — SyncShot is built to copy, not move. If a workflow does call for clearing the source after a verified copy, that's a conscious choice you make per workflow, never a surprise.
- 04
How do I know the copy is intact?
Every copy is hash-verified end to end. If a destination wrote something other than what the Pixel handed over, SyncShot flags it and retries — and the job report tells you exactly what landed where.
- 05
Why is my Pixel offload slower than USB-C should be?
The Pixel chip caps MTP at USB 2.0 speeds — around 20 MB/s — regardless of cable or port. This is a phone-side limit, not a Mac or SyncShot one, and no USB-C cable changes it. For large offloads, enable Developer Options and USB Debugging, then let SyncShot pull over ADB instead. ADB consistently beats MTP on Pixels and gets closer to what the storage can actually deliver.
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