Transferring Files from a Nokia Cell Phone to a Mac Using Bluetooth

September 20, 2007

(There, I think I loaded enough keywords to get this to show up in a search. I know I could've used it a while back.)

All right, so one of my complaints about the Mac was that it couldn't figure out how to get images off the phone's memory card. Well, a friend of mine showed me how to do it, and I was going about it backwards.

First, you want to activate Bluetooth on the phone. Do not start the Bluetooth connection on your Mac. This will "use up" the one connection you're allowed, and you won't be able to continue.

Select the images you want to transfer on the phone. On my model you can "mark" the images you want, or choose "Mark all" from the Options menu while you're looking at the listing. Then choose "Send > Via Bluetooth" from the Options menu. Alternately, you can just move one image by choosing "Send" while it's highlighted.

Choose your target Mac from the list of available devices. You need to have set up the phone on the Mac previously for this to work, I think. The Mac will ask if you want to transfer the files. Say "Yes".

The files will begin copying into your Documents folder. From there you can do whatever you want with them.

Note: Unlike when you use Nokia's special program to transfer to a PC, this method will not keep the files' modified dates. If you sort your images by date and time, you're going to want to keep them on your phone for reference. I wound up with a bunch of year-old images that I could barely guess on a month because I deleted the phone's copies too soon. Don't repeat my mistake.

So there you have it, easy as pie. Other phones probably work similarly, but the only ones I can say for sure are Nokias.

September 18, 2007September 21, 2007