Moving reference images from a phone to a desktop sounds simple until you are actually in the middle of making something.
You find a photo in your camera roll, or save a few screenshots from social media, and then you have to send them to yourself, open another app, drag them to your computer, and only then return to the image generation workflow.
That break is small, but it is annoying enough to interrupt the flow.
So we added phone photo upload to DreamWith image-to-image mode.
Now you can open the upload area on desktop, scan a QR code with your phone, choose photos directly from your mobile album, and watch them sync back into the same task on desktop.
What the feature does
In image-to-image mode, DreamWith now gives you a phone upload entry next to the existing desktop uploader.
The idea is simple:
- Keep the desktop workflow where it already is
- Let your phone become the quickest way to add reference images
- Avoid the usual "send to yourself first" step
This is especially useful when:
- your reference images already live in your phone album
- you are collecting inspiration while browsing on mobile
- you want to upload several reference images in one session
- you are working on a desktop but choosing images is faster on your phone
How to use it
Using it is straightforward:
- Open image-to-image in DreamWith on desktop
- Click the phone upload icon in the image uploader area
- Scan the QR code with your phone
- Open the upload page on mobile and choose a photo
- Wait for the image to appear automatically on desktop
You do not need to refresh the page, and you do not need to manually transfer the file between devices first.
Designed for the same task, not every task
The upload session is tied to the current image generation task.
That means if you are still working on the same task, you can continue uploading more images from your phone within a short window without starting over each time.
If you start a new generation task, DreamWith creates a new upload session for that task instead of reusing the previous one. This keeps reference images from different tasks from getting mixed together.
What happens if you close the desktop dialog
This part is worth knowing.
If you close the QR upload dialog on desktop, the phone page does not become a universal uploader for everything. It still belongs to that same task session, but desktop is no longer actively connected to it.
So if you want to keep uploading and see new images sync back to desktop, just reopen the upload dialog on desktop first. Once it reconnects, the session can continue syncing again.
In practice, the safest pattern is:
- keep using the same upload dialog while you are actively adding references
- if you close it, reopen it before continuing from your phone
- if you move on to a new task, start with a fresh upload session
Why we shipped it this way
We wanted this to feel like a useful extension of the existing uploader, not a separate mini product.
The desktop uploader is still the center of the workflow. The phone upload path is there to remove friction when your source images are already on mobile.
That balance matters. Sometimes the best feature is not the one that adds a brand new interface. It is the one that shortens a boring step you were repeating anyway.
If most of your references start on your phone, this should make image-to-image feel much smoother.
