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I'm trying to upload a photo from my iPhone 4 to a website. However, the browse button to display the select file dialog is disabled. Normally this works fine on my Windows PC. Should I be able to select image files to upload from Safari on iPhone?

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  • I just tried Opera Mini and while the choose button is not greyed out, tapping it doesn't do anything. How can I do this?
    – GiddyUpHorsey
    Nov 17, 2010 at 9:50
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    I see absolutely no reason why the "Browse" button on browsers on iOS devices (iPhone and iPad) shouldn't be allowed to access the Photo albums (containing photos and video clips recorded using the build-in camera). This wouldn't be a security problem, nor a usability problem since it would not expose a file-system as such, but merely exposing a visual navigation of the photos.
    – Morten Hattesen
    May 10, 2011 at 20:27

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Specifically the browse button is disabled because there isn't a file browser (like Windows Explorer/Finder) on the iPhone. Most people don't notice that, because the iOS is designed around avoiding the need for a user interface to the iPhone's file system.

For simplicity's sake file management is turned into a programing problem instead of a user problem. For security's sake applications can't directly access the documents of other applications.

As Jawa mention, a lot of sites have iPhone applications to allow uploads.

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    This answer is out of date.
    – Toby Allen
    Jan 27, 2015 at 19:09
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    How is it out of date? Although the answer doesn't provide much info/example on how to get file/photo upload working for a site on iPhone.
    – David
    Jan 27, 2015 at 21:36
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    Allen is correct here, recent versions of Mobile Safari do recognize '<input type="file">' and this can use to either pick an existing image or take a new image from the camera. Looks like there has been some bugs, but works on my phone. Discussion here: jsbin.com/kuhol/2
    – David Rouse
    Jan 28, 2015 at 14:18
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As of iOS 6, Mobile Safari now supports file (image) uploads, from the Camera Roll, albums, and photostreams. Note that iOS 6 is only available for the iPhone 3GS and newer.

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    The referenced link seems to be dead. Page not found.
    – David
    Jan 27, 2015 at 21:38
  • I believe that even with image upload support on iOS 6, one may have to tweak their site's code to support it well compared to a browser. Particularly for things like multiple image upload selection where we batch upload multiple images together. We had to do it for our websites. Not being the developer, I don't know the specifics on what was done, but a change had to be made in our mobile site code that differed from desktop version.
    – David
    Jan 27, 2015 at 21:40
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No, uploading from mobile Safari is not possible. That's why about every other site that utilizes user uploads (e.g. Flickr, Facebook, Picasa) have either made their own upload app for the iPhone, or there are some apps that can handle many sites, such as Pixelpipe.

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  • That is hilariously ridiculous. It's easy for a big company to make an app, but I'm sure this caused issues for lots of other companies, non-companies, open source web apps, etc. But thankfully it sounds like you can now upload photos from mobile Safari at least.
    – mikato
    Dec 12, 2017 at 22:10
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You can't upload files using mobile Safari.

Even though, you can either use iCab Mobile browser which support file upload or can use native iOS applications which are seamless integrated with a webspage. Here are some of them:

QuickPic

Aurigma Up

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You can enable the browse button in Mobile Safari using a Cydia App: Safari Upload Enabler.

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