You should do this it teaches you
How do you connect your phone to your computer
Question marked as
I'm a little confused by the headline.
You would use the lightning cable for charging, but plug it into the computer. If you only have the USB C cable and your computer doesn't have USB C, then you would get a USB A to lightning cable.
On a Mac, you will see your iPhone show up on the left hand column in Finder. Just open a new Finder window and scroll down.
On Windows, you will want to download iTunes and then plug the iPhone in.