[HN Gopher] iCloud Photos Downloader
___________________________________________________________________
iCloud Photos Downloader
Author : reconnecting
Score : 619 points
Date : 2026-01-11 19:23 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| reconnecting wrote:
| Surprisingly, there is no official way to download all (400 Gb)
| photos from iCloud. Here is an open-source command-line tool to
| download all your iCloud photos.
| cdrnsf wrote:
| I'm not sure it's surprising. Apple doesn't want you to leave
| and making something as important as your photos difficult to
| move helps with that.
| lostlogin wrote:
| What's missing?
|
| The files are there on the Mac, they are there to download on
| the cloud (various mentions of method mentioned here).
| reconnecting wrote:
| There is NO button on Mac to download photos from iCloud.
| You can only do this from your phone and then synchronise
| them to your Mac.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| You can use the Photos app on your Mac and download
| originals
| mr_toad wrote:
| There are two options in the file menu - you can export
| the originals, and there is an option to export them as
| .jpg.
| reconnecting wrote:
| From iPhotos (Photos) app to hard drive.
|
| Subject is to download photos from iCloud.
| lostlogin wrote:
| When you first turn on iCloud Photos, it can take a while
| to upload your photos to iCloud. You can continue to use
| Photos while your photos are being uploaded. To have
| iCloud Photos sync photos to all your devices, sign in to
| the same Apple Account to turn on iCloud Photos on all
| your devices.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-
| gb/guide/photos/phtf5e48489c/ma...
| coder543 wrote:
| Yes, there is a button on Mac:
| https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/use-icloud-photos-
| pht...
|
| As long as you are signed into the Mac with the same
| iCloud account used on the iPhone, this _will_ download
| them all. No, you do not need to get them all downloaded
| to the iPhone ever for any reason for this to work.
| Period. You need to stop repeating that, because it is
| wrong. How many people have to say the same thing?
|
| Yes, you will have to go into a hidden folder to access
| the Originals once they're downloaded if you want to copy
| them somewhere else, but it's like two clicks.
| reconnecting wrote:
| I've been using Mac since Mac OS X 10.4 (~2005) and was
| under the same impression.
|
| However, in reality, when you use the same Apple account
| on both devices with the Photos app on macOS (yes, with
| the 'Download Originals' checkbox enabled), it only
| downloads photos that you upload from your phone.
|
| And if you look at the iCloud tab in the Photos app, it
| says 'Automatically _upload_ and store all your photos
| and videos in iCloud', so it works from Mac to iCloud,
| and doesn't help to download full iCloud library.
| coder543 wrote:
| No, you are not correct. How many people have to tell you
| this?
|
| It absolutely works the way I said it does, because I
| have seen it work that way. Just because you accidentally
| turned off iCloud Photos in your Apple Account settings
| _on that Mac_ (or some other similar issue) does not mean
| it does not work this way when properly signed in.
|
| If you want something to try, go to System Settings ->
| Apple Account -> Photos and see if "Sync this mac" is
| turned off. It needs to be on. There could be other ways
| that this feature is disabled, but that is one of them.
|
| _Not seeing something work_ is not evidence that it does
| not work. You have not seen it work, but that is not
| proof it does not work.
|
| Seeing it work _is_ evidence that it works. I have seen
| it work.
|
| Other people have seen it work that way, and their
| replies are all over this thread. Apple documents that it
| works this way.
|
| Yes, it will upload photos to iCloud if enabled, but it
| also downloads them.
| reconnecting wrote:
| When you take a new photo, it synchronises with all your
| devices, and therefore you see it on your Mac, iPhone,
| etc. However, if you get a new Mac (I got one because my
| library was under capacity), Photos will not start
| synchronising your 10-year-old photos until you process
| them through the phone.
|
| I hope I've made it clear now.
| coder543 wrote:
| Your point has been clear the whole time. It is still not
| correct.
| lostlogin wrote:
| One of us is missing something. In Photos.app I clicked
| download originals. The photos are there on my Mac. It's
| bit gross to get at them though - right click on app >
| show package contents.
|
| Are you wanting a way that doesn't involve the photos
| app?
|
| You can do that from iCloud over a browser.
| reconnecting wrote:
| If you open the Photos app (macOS) connected to iCloud
| with an empty library, there will be no photos until you
| import them from your phone. Hope this is clear now.
|
| iCloud via browser has a limit of 1k photos per download.
| lostlogin wrote:
| This is not correct.
|
| You don't need an iPhone for Photos.app to work.
|
| There are plenty of problems with Photos.app but the
| issue you describe isn't by design.
| reconnecting wrote:
| My bad -- it appears that Monterey wasn't syncing with
| iCloud due to "Performance." Photos on Monterey hides the
| status message at the bottom of the page, and I had to
| pull the page down twice to finally see it.
|
| Thank you for proving me wrong.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Oh god. I'd forgotten about that tiny dialogue box.
|
| 98,281 items to sync.
|
| I hope it comes right quickly.
| wookmaster wrote:
| Select all, Files > Export. It's simple to download
| iCloud Photos.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| From 2024:
|
| > Users of Google and Apple's photo cloud services can now
| transfer images between them. It was already possible to
| export photos and videos from iCloud to Google Photos, but
| now it can also be done the other way around: from Google
| Photos to iCloud.
|
| https://www.techzine.eu/news/applications/122196/google-
| and-... (2023 Data Transfer Initiative (DTI))
| kccqzy wrote:
| That's not true. On any Mac or iPhone you can choose the iCloud
| Photo Library storage option to download all instead of letting
| the system optimize the storage. And if you turn off iCloud
| Photo Library, it will also try to download it all. I know this
| because I stopped using iCloud Photo Library and that was how I
| got all my photos downloaded.
| hu3 wrote:
| that's good to know. can I then download the photos from
| iPhone to a backup hard-drive or transfer to a folder in my
| computer?
| hackpelican wrote:
| Yes over USB 2.0 until recently.
| possiblerobot wrote:
| +1 to this method. After optimise storage is disabled on the
| Mac, wait for all photos to download. Then, open the photos
| library bundle and you'll see every photo there, full res.
| Copy them wherever you like.
|
| Also, if you leave optimise storage disabled and continue to
| use Photos, every photo will be cloned in any local or cloud
| backups of your machine. This strategy creates additional
| photo redundancy separate from iCloud while still benefiting
| from library syncing.
| lostlogin wrote:
| This was my strategy too, but with a disgusting script
| which quit photos.app, rsync the photo library to a network
| share, then reopened photos.app so that it kept downloading
| from iCloud.
|
| Not sure if the open/close is required, but I didn't want
| to find out.
| lencastre wrote:
| I don't fully trust iCloud Drive / Photos therefore I use
| FSViewer to download all photos from my iOS device du
| jour (making sure to keep the HEIF formats), this way I
| get the Edited (slo-mo, live, portrait, usw) and pristine
| versions as Jobs intended. All kidding aside, after the
| gray area gate of 2017-2021 I had to find a more reliable
| backup workflow. As of today I only use iCloud Drive /
| Photos to extract some RAW photos that for some reason
| some picky apps don't save to the photo album (looking at
| you ProCam 8.0). I made several tests including hash
| comparisons and imagemagick diffs and I am quite pleased.
| mbirth wrote:
| Or use the great osxphotos tool that works with Apple
| Photo's SQLite database to let you manage all the photos in
| your library.
|
| https://github.com/RhetTbull/osxphotos
| Barbing wrote:
| Demo .gif sold me
|
| (Been meaning to make a software demo gif gallery, best
| way to understand many categories of apps)
| reconnecting wrote:
| Someone gave me a new iPhone (120GB) and a new MacBook Pro
| and asked me to download all their photos from iCloud. Long
| story short, after 120GB of photos were synchronised to the
| iPhone, the MacBook Pro refused to copy them, and now
| there's no storage left on the iPhone.
|
| Also, Photos on Mac doesn't have an option to download
| photos directly, so the only valid option Apple offers is
| to download them through the web interface (max 1,000 at a
| time).
|
| There is no official way to download iCloud library that is
| over phone capacity. Period.
| fizwidget wrote:
| That doesn't sound right. My photo library is larger than
| my iPhone's storage yet downloads fine on my Mac. Just
| need to make sure "optimise storage" is enabled on the
| iPhone and disabled on the Mac.
|
| Once everything's downloaded on the Mac, you can either
| export through the Apple Photos menu or just copy the
| "originals" directly from the Photos bundle.
| fakedang wrote:
| And people say Linux is hard to work with....
| reconnecting wrote:
| This works because you had synchronised your iPhone with
| your Mac previously. If you start with an empty Photos
| library and phone, it is impossible to put all the photos
| on the phone and thus transfer them to your Mac.
| fizwidget wrote:
| No, I've downloaded the entire library to a new Mac. It
| worked fine.
| reconnecting wrote:
| Thank you. Yes, indeed. I found out that Monterey is not
| syncing iCloud due to "Performance".
| js2 wrote:
| > Photos on Mac doesn't have an option to download photos
| directly
|
| Yes it does. It's called _Download Originals to this
| Mac_.
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/use-icloud-photos-
| pht...
|
| You keep asserting to the contrary, but I've been syncing
| my entire photos library to my Mac for years, since it
| was iPhoto even.
|
| Obviously if you have a larger photos library than
| storage space on a particular device, you cannot
| synchronize the entire library to that specific device.
| e.g. my photos library vastly exceeds my iPhone 13 mini
| storage, so on my iPhone, I don't sync everything. But my
| Mac has 2 TB of storage, and Photos is setup to sync all
| my photos, and does so, reliably, and has been, again,
| for years now.
|
| Additionally, unlike with this open source tool, I can
| keep advanced data protection enabled.
| reconnecting wrote:
| This is from the iCloud manual:
|
| > Any new photos and videos you add to Photos appear on
| all your devices that have iCloud Photos turned on.
|
| You have your photos because they are new. If they had
| been taken before, they would not have synchronised
| automatically with Photos on MacOS.
| coder543 wrote:
| Please stop repeating your incorrect points that are
| contradicted by everyone else's real experiences.
|
| Yes, new ones will be uploaded. That doesn't mean old
| ones won't also be downloaded.
| reconnecting wrote:
| I have tried 3 different Macs with different versions of
| macOS prior to looking for a workaround, and everywhere
| the result is the same: old photos are not downloaded
| automatically from iCloud, and there is no button to
| start this process - for this exact reason.
|
| Want to prove me wrong? Create a new macOS user and open
| Photos with your iCloud. It will be empty until you start
| copying photos from your phone. It will take much less
| time than arguing here.
| coder543 wrote:
| You're arguing with a lot of people who have personally
| seen this work. You can listen to other people. You can
| also go to an Apple Store and let them show you what's
| going wrong here.
| reconnecting wrote:
| Perhaps no one here has tried to download an entire
| iCloud library at once, or perhaps size is an issue, but
| that doesn't change the fact that there is no download
| button for iCloud Photos and iCloud Photos Downloader
| simply solves this. That's what this post is about.
| coder543 wrote:
| iCloud Photos Downloader is an option, yes, but it is
| incorrect to say that Apple does not provide an official
| way to do this on Mac. Again, I direct you to the Apple
| Store so someone can show you in person, since you won't
| listen to anyone on here.
| reconnecting wrote:
| I confirm that you was absolutely right!
|
| Photos on MacOS indeed synchronise photos with iCloud.
|
| After our conversation I had tried to understand why I
| indeed don't see any status and I found out, that to get
| one in Monterey iOS I must need to scroll down of the
| collection and after, at the bottom pul whole page for
| the second time. Status message appears and it was saying
| that syncing was disabled due to Mac performance (I
| didn't asked for this).
|
| Apologies, for misleading, code543 and thank you for
| consistence.
|
| However, I must admit that I'm happy that found iCloud
| Photos Downloader as a result, also I liked that it's
| downloading all photos in date/folder structure.
| troad wrote:
| I can personally confirm I've downloaded an entire iCloud
| library at once, to a brand new Mac, using the 'Download
| Originals to this Mac' option. As have many others here,
| I would think.
|
| That's literally what that option is for.
|
| If it's not working for you, you might be dealing with a
| bug, or perhaps you haven't given it enough time to sync.
| If you go to Photos > Library and scroll down, it should
| show you the sync status.
| reconnecting wrote:
| Thanks, that was a relief because I realised I didn't see
| the sync status at the bottom. It appears that Monterey
| hides the status message at the bottom by default, and I
| had to pull the page down twice to see it.
|
| Long story short, iCloud wasn't syncing photos "due to
| performance" and this message was hidden.
|
| Thanks once again!
| mingus88 wrote:
| Let me be one more voice telling you that you are wrong.
| I just did this morning.
|
| In settings, "download originals to this mac", select all
| photos, file -> "export unmodified originals" will
| trigger the Photos app to download every file from iCloud
| into your local library (as well as exporting them to
| wherever you want)
|
| I guess "there is no download button" but dude...I don't
| need iCloud Photos Downloader.
| reconnecting wrote:
| Thanks for letting me know. May I ask what macOS version
| you use?
|
| Unfortunately, I'm unable to locate any button, status
| bar, or option to refresh or pull everything from iCloud
| in macOS Photos. There aren't even any details showing
| what percentage of iCloud is currently synchronized with
| macOS Photos. With nothing to debug, I can only conclude
| that for some reason the sync isn't working in my case.
|
| It's great if this works for you and you don't need
| iCloud Photos Downloader, but for some reason I don't
| have that luxury.
| reconnecting wrote:
| Thank you! The status message was indeed hidden on
| Monterey, and syncing was blocked due to "Performance."
| nottorp wrote:
| I once exported my photos out of the iwhatever library.
| They weren't in the cloud, Apple hadn't managed to trick me
| into turning that on.
|
| What I remember is that I opened the library in finder and
| in mc, got scared by the readable-only-by-machine directory
| structure and used a 3rd party tool to export them to date
| labeled directories.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Thanks to Apple's exceptional software quality the app has
| plenty of bugs and good luck exporting a lot of files out of
| said library - you're in for an endless game of spinners (it
| does some network IO on the main thread), "not responding"
| and memory leaks.
|
| But hey at least we've got Liquid (gl)ass now.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Thanks to Apple 's exceptional software quality the app
| has plenty of bugs..._
|
| I use Photos for macOS daily and I've never run into a bug
| with my 50K+ photos library. (To be fair, Photos doesn't do
| _that_ much, and I use it more as a master catalog with
| Aperture 's spiritual successor Nitro.)
|
| > _...and good luck exporting a lot of files out of said
| library..._
|
| Not sure why you would need luck to copy the "Originals"
| folder from the library package.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > I've never run into a bug with my 50K+ photos library.
|
| Have you tried dragging & dropping a photo from the
| Photos app to your desktop to export it as a file?
|
| I just tried it and while the Photos app UI didn't freeze
| (I guess either my memory is bad and the spinner behavior
| was on _imports_ , or they fixed it since 2 years ago),
| but it takes ~3 seconds for a single photo to appear as a
| file on my desktop (with no UI or any indicator that
| something is happening), and dragging & dropping 45
| photos took over a minute (again with no progress
| indicator).
|
| Granted, it turns out I didn't have "download originals"
| on (not sure if it was always like that or got reset
| during an update) so hopefully for Apple it's that - but
| I still think at the very least a progress indicator on
| what seems like a network IO operation is in order (and I
| wonder what happens if I interrupted my network
| connection during its operation - does it just silently
| never complete and my files never appear, _actually_ show
| an UI, or just crash?).
|
| Edit: well nevermind, despite all the files apparently
| exporting just fine, ~5 minutes later after initiating
| the operation I just got a hideous popup that some files
| failed to export: https://imgur.com/a/SFXZB5N
|
| It's progress, at least it's the first indication in the
| UI that something was actually happening. You will notice
| that the error text is truncated, the only way to read it
| all is to resize the window (no hover text) and for some
| reason the horizontal scroll in this UI element does not
| follow your touchpad - you have to scroll, lift your
| fingers, and ~1 second later the UI suddenly applies your
| scroll operation.
|
| Also, it turns out that resizing the window finally
| readjusted the table control and now the table actually
| matches the size of its container and isn't scrollable
| anymore. Which might be a good thing as it at least
| alleviates the bug mentioned previously, but then why did
| the control initialize oversized to begin with?
|
| Again this is the kind of jank I'd expect from Linux, and
| nowadays maybe Windows. But not Mac.
|
| > copy the "Originals" folder from the library package
|
| My bad, I wasn't aware of said folder; I treated the
| "package" as an internal implementation detail equivalent
| to a proprietary format and wasn't going through it. I
| don't think it's a fair expectation to have (potentially
| non-technical) people to right click "Show package
| contents" while the usual double-click on the file just
| opens the library in the Photos app.
| wookmaster wrote:
| Worked well for me for 70k photos but took a long time
| reconnecting wrote:
| Okay, and if there are 300 or 500 GB of photos, how do you
| synchronise them with your iPhone?
| mxfh wrote:
| You can't run random cli-tools on your iOS phone either.
| nemothekid wrote:
| I think if you are on PC. But on Mac with the Photos App
|
| Cmd+A > File > Export Unmodified Originals
| reconnecting wrote:
| There is no straight way to download photos from iCloud to
| Mac.
| wookmaster wrote:
| The comment you're replying to just gave one, I did it
| recently for 70k photos. select all > export. That's it. It
| just took 30 hours.
| marscopter wrote:
| Photos > Settings > iCloud > Download Originals to this
| Mac.
| reddalo wrote:
| Technically, there is: users of the European Union can get a
| full export of all data that Apple has about them, including
| all the stored photos. It can be requested from here:
| https://privacy.apple.com/
| catskull wrote:
| I was able to request a photo dump as a non-EU customer using
| this link.
| ireadmevs wrote:
| How does the archive they provide look like? Many zip files?
| I would like to retrieve them and offload to another storage
| service but I don't have local storage enough to hold all of
| it at the same time, unpack and then reupload. I would need
| to do it in stages.
| lostlogin wrote:
| While that's a pain for you, it's also a pain if they have
| multiple files for those that have enough storage.
|
| Photo management is a bit of a nightmare as it's an awful
| lot of small(ish) files.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Yes, many ZIP files. You can select the ZIP file sizes,
| from 1 to 25 GB, iirc. Although a few end up larger than 25
| for some reason. And took 1-2 days for Apple to "prepare".
| prawn wrote:
| You can request a chunk size and then it prepares them. I
| specified max chunk size and it took almost a week to give
| me a list of file downloads from 45-60GB each. 31 zip files
| to download.
| reconnecting wrote:
| It sounds really weird that instead of making a separate
| utility, or allowing you to download iCloud Photos in the
| native Photos application on Mac, Apple requires you to go
| through a legal procedure.
|
| I'm OK with clicking a button to download all photos to Mac,
| but there is no such button. Or maybe there was one
| previously, but it has now disappeared.
| einsteinx2 wrote:
| > or allowing you to download iCloud Photos in the native
| Photos application on Mac
|
| Here's the official documentation page for exporting
| directly using Photos for Mac without syncing everything
| locally: https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/download-
| photos-to-yo...
|
| You can also choose to sync all photos locally with Photos
| for Mac by setting "Download Originals to this Mac" as
| described on this page which is what I do to keep a local
| copy: https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/photos-
| settings-pht51...
|
| If your Mac doesn't have enough space, export them to a USB
| hard drive or if you're using the download originals
| option, first move your library location to the USB drive
| as also described on the link above.
| reconnecting wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| That's exactly what I expected to work, but for some
| reason this approach failed for me on a new Mac with an
| empty Photos library. I enabled "Download Originals," but
| 10+ years of iCloud photos never appeared. There's no
| manual "fetch all from iCloud" button, no progress
| indicator, no way to diagnose what's wrong - the sync
| just silently fails. Luckily, iCloud Photos Downloader
| bypasses Photos entirely and pulls directly from iCloud.
| reconnecting wrote:
| You were absolutely right. Someone in the thread
| mentioned a status indicator, and it triggered me that I
| hadn't seen it at all.
|
| It appears that on Monterey I need to pull the page down
| twice to show the sync status, and when I found it, the
| message said that photos weren't syncing due to
| "Performance."
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| Doesn't work if you have Advanced Data Protection (end to end
| encryption) enabled.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Vulnerability hijack incoming with the headline calling for
| another maintainer
| tra3 wrote:
| Does anyone know if there's a way to self host/impersonate
| iCloud? I'd like to back my iPhone up locally.
| yrcyrc wrote:
| For pictures you can use https://immich.app/
| idorosen wrote:
| https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse might help.
| nntwozz wrote:
| You can do manual backups in macOS using Finder, or iTunes on
| Windows.
| Tepix wrote:
| There's also a Program called "Apple devices" I believe from
| Apple for Windows that will let you backup your iPhone/iPad.
|
| If you configure a password for your backup it will backup
| more (confidential) data than if you don't encrypt your local
| backup.
| dwayne_dibley wrote:
| Immich is probably the best option
| mfkp wrote:
| Or ente photos: https://ente.io/
| netsharc wrote:
| I'm sure grandparent meant to modify it so they'd just have
| to click "Backup to cloud" on their iPhone and instead of the
| iPhone sending their files to Apple's servers, it sends them
| to a local backup server...
| cortesoft wrote:
| Immich can get pretty close to that experience, with the
| iPhone app and a local immich instance.
| ValentineC wrote:
| A lot of iPhone apps can backup the iOS photo library these
| days, including the abovementioned Immich, Google Photos,
| and Dropbox.
| vachina wrote:
| All the comment here fail to address the "view" part of iCloud.
|
| I wrote a webapp to try to solve that for myself
| (https://github.com/yhling/go-web-image-gallery)
| caminanteblanco wrote:
| I mean can't you go to privacy.apple.com, ask for an archive of
| your data, and then they'll email you the link to a zip file in a
| week or two? I'm pretty sure this is what my girlfriend did when
| she transitioned from an iPhone to a Pixel. I think there's even
| a specific checkbox for photos/videos
| catskull wrote:
| Thanks! I've been looking at options for this and didn't
| realize Apple had an official method. Just submitted a request,
| we'll see how it goes.
| mmh0000 wrote:
| Yes... Let me ask my corporate overload and wait 2 weeks for
| permission to download my family photos.
| ericj5 wrote:
| Wow, I will definitely give this a try. I have tens of thousands
| of photos in iCloud and I literally can't export them all at
| once. Photos app chokes and crashes and manually babysitting
| smaller batches is a pain. It's pretty clear they want to make it
| as hard as possible
| CSDude wrote:
| All my vertical videos in iCloud show up cropped horizontal for
| some reason. If I go to edit I see the whole video. I really do
| not want to trust any cloud provider to maintain my years of
| archives of family photos and videos. Glad things like this
| exist. I just need properly date-foldered files, without no
| duplciates. Is that so hard?
| Angostura wrote:
| Sounds like the contact sheet view is just using square preview
| thumbails?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _All my vertical videos in iCloud show up cropped horizontal
| for some reason._
|
| Turn your phone? /ducks
| 1love1heart wrote:
| There is something similar to Google Takeout for Apple Photos.
| Recently used it to download thousands of photos.
| Dachande663 wrote:
| I've been using this for several years now on a little unraid box
| to download new photos nightly. There's a few docker containers
| that wrap in support for notifying when 2FA is required etc.
| Always makes me nervous, the access it has, but I'd rather have
| my photos backed up somewhere I own.
| axpy906 wrote:
| This great. I want to switch to android but the only thing
| stopping me is eight years of photos. No more.
| wrxd wrote:
| If your end goal is to move the photos to Google photos have a
| look at
| https://support.google.com/photos/answer/10502587?sjid=13067...
| neilalexander wrote:
| You can go to https://privacy.apple.com, log in with your Apple
| ID, select "Request to transfer a copy of your data" and then
| select "iCloud photos and videos to Google Photos".
| punnerud wrote:
| You know you only need to do a GDPR request to Apple (dedicated
| page), select images and you get a download link after a few
| hours
| thierryzoller wrote:
| For those in the EU only ?
| punnerud wrote:
| Believe it work for everyone? I am located in Oslo/Norway, so
| can't check if it does not apply everywhere.
|
| Only need to go to this page to do the request
| https://privacy.apple.com/
| j16sdiz wrote:
| You can't really file a GDPR request, but the (self-service,
| web based) download tools works for everybody.
| mmh0000 wrote:
| I run this periodically from a little shell script; I "should"
| automate it, but time is scarce. > cat
| ~/bin/icloud_download #!/bin/bash mkdir
| "$(pwd)"/{photos,cookies} 2> /dev/null if [[ -z
| "${ICLOUD_USERNAME}" ]]; then echo "need env
| ICLOUD_USERNAME" exit 1 fi if [[ -z
| "${ICLOUD_PASSWORD}" ]]; then echo "need env
| ICLOUD_PASSWORD" exit 1 fi podman
| container run -it --rm --name icloud \ -v
| $(pwd)/photos:/data \ -v $(pwd)/cookies:/cookies \
| -e TZ=America/Boise \ icloudpd/icloudpd:latest \
| icloudpd --directory /data \ --cookie-directory
| /cookies \ --folder-structure {:%Y/%Y-%m-%d} \
| --username "${ICLOUD_USERNAME}" \ --password
| "${ICLOUD_PASSWORD}" \ --size original
| koolba wrote:
| > icloudpd/icloudpd:latest
|
| Passing your raw iCloud creds into the unverified latest tag is
| fine until it's not. Better to pin to a specific tag or hash.
| mmh0000 wrote:
| You're not wrong. I know I need to put more work into it.
| Just haven't had time.
|
| I'm "protected" by the fact Podman doesn't automatically
| update the latest image even when using the latest tag.
|
| I was more showing how simple icloudpd is to use.
| ccakes wrote:
| Seems to be looking for a new maintainer. If anyone has the
| bandwidth, it's a great piece of software
| jeanofthedead wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Parachute Backup for this purpose.
| https://parachuteapps.com/parachute
| monocularvision wrote:
| Do you know if this supports multiple users? Can't find mention
| of it in the site.
| rgovostes wrote:
| My concern with backing up iCloud Photos with anything but Apple
| Photos is that there are some proprietary formats like Live
| Photos and slow mo video for which exports are lossy. Also, Apple
| Photos stores all edits non-destructively, so 'flattening' the
| edits into a single file for export is also a lossy operation.
|
| It seems like an obvious improvement for Time Machine to support
| full backups while using optimized storage on the primary system.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Could the first obvious improvement please be its speed? My
| god. The local Time Machine backup is slower on a 10gb network
| than Backblaze over the Internet. It isn't even close.
| dangus wrote:
| Asking for anything out of Time Machine is a lost cause. It's
| essentially a completed and legacy product.
|
| I migrated to Linux + Pika Backup. For photos I use Ente
| Photos with their managed cloud storage plus a continuous
| export to my NAS.
|
| Ente is surprisingly well integrated with iOS, you really
| don't need to use Apple's solution. It automatically backs up
| photos I take in the background.
| varenc wrote:
| I backup ~3-4GB a day with Time Machine to my local NAS and
| it takes less 10 minutes. Albeit it should take 30 seconds if
| it was maxing out the network speed.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I've done the _sudo sysctl
| debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0_. But it's still slow.
|
| 10 minutes is great, and my changes wouldn't seem as
| extensive as yours. I need to dig deeper.
| rgovostes wrote:
| I reinstalled my system and attempted for weeks to get Time
| Machine to complete a first backup. Every time I started it,
| the progress bar would fill up about 60% and then stall, and
| eventually kernel panic if the system was left idle for
| hours. Never happened before I reinstalled, though I have had
| it randomly decide the backup is corrupt and it has to start
| over. macOS deserves a better first-party backup feature.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > I have had it randomly decide the backup is corrupt and
| it has to start over.
|
| I have hit this too many times.
| dangus wrote:
| In my experience migrating to another provider from iCloud,
| this hasn't been a significant issue. Live Photos in particular
| are not really proprietary in the sense that they're
| implemented in an extremely simple way that basically every
| photo tool understands. ~~Slow motion videos are also not
| proprietary, they're just a plain video file.~~ <<< edit: I
| think I'm wrong about slow motion
| rgovostes wrote:
| > Slow motion videos are also not proprietary, they're just a
| plain video file.
|
| I haven't looked into the implementation details, but Photos
| lets you adjust the section of the video that is played back
| in slow motion. I thought if you share a slow-mo video, it
| gets re-encoded to bake this in (i.e., one second at 240fps
| gets exported as four seconds at 60fps).
| fn-mote wrote:
| How about just turning off optimized storage and letting Time
| Machine do its job?
| rgovostes wrote:
| I have a 1.2T photo library. Carrying that around on my
| MacBook requires an $800 upgrade to the SSD.
|
| Time Machine's job is to back up my data, it's not strictly
| to make a 1:1 copy of local storage. It should back up my
| cloud data too.
| mrexroad wrote:
| My library is large too (roughly a third larger). After
| years of far more complicated storage/backup solutions, I
| settled w/ a second Photos library on an external hdd w/
| optimize storage disabled. I plug the drive in and open
| this library every so often to update and then duplicate
| the drive for an off-site copy. Day to day, I use a Photos
| library on my primary drive with optimize storage enabled.
|
| I've found unreasonable value in being able to search
| through hundreds of thousands of photos from my phone, so I
| went all-in on Photos.app. Though one enabling factor is
| that my photography workflow has drastic simplified in
| recent years to doing very little post (except for
| astrophotography, which I try and keep wip out of
| Photos.app anyway).
| nik_0_0 wrote:
| I had tried this but found it a little bit weird -
| switching back and forth on the same device between the
| 'hard drive w/ full files' library and the 'primary drive
| optimize storage' didn't really seem easy.
|
| IIRC Photos.app will not even open if the default library
| you are pointing at is not there (i.e drive was
| unplugged). Are you able to just open up the library file
| directly and it will work as expected?
|
| I also recall when changing Photos.app back to the HDD
| Library it did a ~2h 'rebuild' session before it even
| started downloading the new photos, but maybe thats
| acceptable with the 'every so often' approach.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| The most annoying thing for me is if you set the date for a
| photo, it gets stored externally rather than modifying the
| photo metadata. So when you switch platform, every photo which
| didn't originally have a captured at date ends up reset to the
| current day every time you move.
|
| For edits, I don't care too much about just baking them in
| since it's unlikely I'm going back to old photos and want to
| undo the crop.
| kimos wrote:
| I've used this tool for years and it's great. But it really
| saves just the raw data. You'd never get it back in to Apple
| Photos as nice as when you pulled it out. Metadata is missing.
| Live Photos come out as an image and a similarly named video.
| But I treat it as the emergency backup. If some Apple DC burns
| down or they ban my Apple ID for some reason, at least the
| photos still exist.
| jaffa2 wrote:
| This. I don't understand why Apple don't have another checkbox
| beside the Download Originals to this Mac that reads 'Store
| Backup of Original Photos on Timemachine' This is all that's
| needed to solve the issue. I actually bought a Mac Studio, and
| a USB disk, just to be able to download originals of my photos
| for local backup, since a MBP is effetively a mobil limited
| device just like an iphone.
|
| "I actually bought a Mac Studio"... "I don't understand why
| Apple don't " ... wait a minute
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Thanks. I cannot get iCloud sync to work at all. It consumes CPU,
| asks for logins repeatedly, etc but fails to actually do its job.
| When I think of its bugs and all the issues with the latest iOS
| (bugs and performance on recent hardware), I am thinking of
| exiting the Apple ecosystem entirely.
| hannob wrote:
| You need an extra tool to download your own photos? That's... not
| a basic feature?
|
| I'm always surprised what kind of antifeatures people in Apple
| land are willing to accept and still use those things...
| cg5280 wrote:
| You absolutely can download your photos, just not via command
| line like this project enables.
| geekamongus wrote:
| You do not need an extra tool to download your photos. This one
| runs from the command line, though.
| CharlesW wrote:
| As is pointed out elsewhere in the thread, there are at three
| official ways to download your own photos. This complements
| those.
| Razele wrote:
| why not use rclone
| porjo wrote:
| Because icloudpd supports downloading photos from icloud and
| rclone does not (yet):
| https://github.com/rclone/rclone/pull/8734
| rsync wrote:
| "why not use rclone (?)"
|
| This is the correct - and obvious - response to something like
| this.
|
| Unfortunately, I believe that rclone has no support for iCloud
| photos at this time.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I created this over the holiday break to do mostly the same:
|
| https://github.com/rcarmo/PhotosExport
|
| ...when you try to export files using the (restricted) APIs we
| get, it automatically triggers a download.
| porjo wrote:
| I use this to sync my wife's photos to Immich and it works great,
| however the auth process is a bit of a pain (not the fault of
| icloudpd) and have to reauth every few months.
| kimos wrote:
| It is a pain.
|
| I've wrapped it in some short scripts which notifies on auth
| failure and it's an easy process to run the auth script. But
| there's no way to avoid the bi-monthly inconvenience I don't
| think.
| shireboy wrote:
| I was just thinking about this today. Apples lack of any 3rd
| party integration for things like this and iMessage is really
| annoying sometimes. In addition to a secondary backup, I'd love
| to automatically sync some photos from a certain album to my
| parents photo frame. Or if I take a nice nature shot have it sync
| to a Samsung frame tv. I get the benefits of the walled garden
| but esp w photos and messaging it seems like opening up a little
| would allow for some innovation
| jackvalentine wrote:
| I use PhotoSync on my phone for this - select which albums to
| sync where with a rule and away you go.
| DHPersonal wrote:
| Parachute Backup is a tool I use:
| https://parachuteapps.com/parachute
| ndegruchy wrote:
| While not free, and not for any other platform than macOS. The
| program Parachute[1] in the App Store is very nice in downloading
| both photos from your library as well as files from the various
| locations.
|
| [1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parachute-
| backup/id6748614170?...
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Is there a way to verify this all is safe to use? Like it won't
| do something weird privacy wise? Any equivalent for windows?
| reconnecting wrote:
| I have the same paranoia, so I was happy to learn that
| someone made an open-source downloader for iCloud.
| malshe wrote:
| Thanks for the link
| teamspirit wrote:
| Anyone know if it works with ADP? I emailed them months ago but
| no one ever replied.
|
| On a related question, is there a download solution that does
| work with ADP? I'm looking to mitigate any potential account
| lockout issues for family members (and, no, they will not
| switch out of the ecosystem).
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| Advanced Data Protection
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| It does. It uses PhotoKit to access photos, so it basically
| uses your Apple Photos app (iOS or Mac) to download the
| photos.
|
| The only scripted solution I can think of that works with ADP
| is osxphotos[^1], but that also uses PhotoKit, and requires
| the user to be signed in.
|
| Personally I use PhotoSync [^2] to backup our photos from
| phones to a NAS. It works reliably, and supports exporting
| unmodified originals as well as edited versions, and XMP/AAE
| metadata alongside it.
|
| ^1: https://github.com/RhetTbull/osxphotos
|
| ^2: https://www.photosync-app.com/home
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| It works well enough, but it's not without flaws either.
|
| The desktop version works reliably, if you can get macOS to
| keep shares mounted for long enough, and mount them on request.
| The scheduler is also kinda wonky.
|
| The iOS version has so far never finished an incremental backup
| overnight of our ~1TB individual libraries. It handles
| resume/suspend well, but for some reason, while it exports
| unmodified originals, it doesn't include AAE files, which the
| desktop version does.
|
| PhotoSync does everything right, with the exception of trying
| to keep state of what has been exported, which makes little
| sense as it doesn't support restoring photos.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Another option for iOS at least is PhotoSync. It's nice, you
| can pull from photos and push to basically any remote service
| or local server. I have it backing up to both my nas and b2.
| jojohack wrote:
| Became more fascinated with the history of my small hometown
| (Paris, Texas) TLDR: Much of it was wiped out by a 1916 fire. I
| spent some time recently vibe-coding this interactive map to
| provide some kind of historic visualization ( which enabled me to
| see the impact better ) https://gorch.com/parisfiremap/
| submeta wrote:
| I pay around 10 euros a month to apple just so I can sync my
| photos from iphone to mac and ipad. That's the only reason I need
| the 2 TB for icloud service. With an app like this I could
| download and keep copies and get rid of iCloud subscription?
| pgalvin wrote:
| This will let you download all of your photos that already
| exist on iCloud Photos.
|
| Going forward, you'd want to set up some other way to sync
| photos you take from your phone to your other devices. I can
| personally recommend Synology Photos for simplicity[1], or
| Immich[2] for an open-source (and in my opinion, slightly
| better) alternative you can run on any hardware, if you'd like
| to set up an always-on NAS. These are "Apple Photos" or "Google
| Photos" equivalents that you host yourself.
|
| Alternatively, something like Syncthing[3] is a dead-simple way
| to sync your photos to various other devices as and when they
| are online, if you'd prefer to manage your photos in an
| ordinary file manager.
|
| I'd be remiss not to mention that, for any solution where you
| move off the cloud to a central storage location of your own,
| you really must make backups to keep your photos safe. The
| 3-2-1 rule is a standard recommendation.
|
| [1] https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/photos
|
| [2] https://immich.app/
|
| [3] https://syncthing.net/
| submeta wrote:
| Thank you very much for the detailed reply. I have a Synology
| NAS, will look into that solution.
| qaid wrote:
| Is there an iCloud Photos uploader?
|
| I have a script to scan files from my camera and add a compressed
| copy to a folder. This folder was supposed to work with the
| iCloud for windows (10) program, but one day it just stopped
| working.
| jeremymaluf wrote:
| Does anyone have any idea for why Apple makes it so difficult to
| keep photos downloaded?
|
| For context, try tapping 'optimize photos' in iPhone storage
| settings and then figure out how to turn off the feature without
| using Google. Not only is the toggle nearly impossible to find,
| but it's also hidden from being searchable
| deafpolygon wrote:
| > For context, try tapping 'optimize photos' in iPhone storage
| settings
|
| Same place it's always been. In Settings -> App -> Photos,
| toggle Download and Keep Originals. Same place it is for macOS
| as well. It's not that magical. Search for "photos icloud" and
| you'll be led to the setting for it.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| I've been using usbmuxd+ifuse to copy the photo files straight
| from the phone. No need to wait for an upload/download to some
| remote server, just a direct cable from the phone to my computer.
| I get the original files, and can even move (instead of copy) to
| clear up the phone.
| kimos wrote:
| This works on any iPhone? It mounts the non-privileged DCIM
| folder or whatever over USB to somewhere on your filesystem?
| With write access?
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Yes, yes, no.
|
| https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/IOS#Transferring_data
| bicepjai wrote:
| Thanks for this project. Our family generates about 2TB of media
| a year, and it's been like that for a while, so we're sitting at
| roughly 12TB total. That's very much the long tail of personal
| media.
|
| I'm not ready to pay $60/month, but I do like iCloud's memories
| and other photo features. My compromise is simple:
|
| - I use docker-icloudpd to download our iCloud Photos to local
| storage over time. It's been the most practical way I've found to
| back up multiple accounts into one place, though it does require
| occasional re-auth every so often. - I keep only the last ~2
| years of media in iCloud and delete older ones after they're
| archived locally. - For browsing and searching the older archive,
| I use Immich, which has been a great self-hosted personal photo
| cloud experience with a modern app feel.
|
| For storage, I've found fast local disk matters a lot once you're
| digging up photos from 5+ years ago. Something like an OWC 4M2
| with M.2 drives keeps the experience snappy; a typical HDD-based
| NAS can feel sluggish when you just want to quickly pull up an
| old memory.
|
| https://github.com/boredazfcuk/docker-icloudpd
| stavros wrote:
| Does Photos have features you use that Immich doesn't? I've
| switched to the latter fully and love it (though I have an
| Android).
| bicepjai wrote:
| Music and AI features are still lagging in Immich, and I can
| understand why. Immich machine learning is not flushed out
| yet. If Immich has plans for creating marketplace for
| extensibility like plugins, in the current era of Claude
| code, I am sure we will end up with many options or features.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| Music? Like a music library? Wouldn't Subsonic be miles
| better for that?
| bicepjai wrote:
| Like Memories feature in Apple which uses media to make
| short form video but also picks and plays music with
| them. We love those videos. Enabling feature like that
| involves understanding metadata and media and music.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| Ahh! They're really cool; kinda miss them from Google
| Photos. I'm hoping Immich will implement something
| similar at some point.
| QuiEgo wrote:
| Encryption at rest. If someone breaks into my house and
| steals my server I'd rather they not be able to get data. I
| can do LUKS but I really want the data to only ever be
| decrypted client side.
| nicbou wrote:
| How much work is it to maintain an Immich instance? I'm
| trying to keep my digital setup lean, but I can't find a
| simple way to get photos off my iPhone and onto my home
| server. One way synchronization is my only goal. Extra
| features are not desired.
| stavros wrote:
| I change a line in the Dockerfile to upgrade it every few
| months, that's it. Otherwise it's zero.
| SirMaster wrote:
| If all you want is a 1-way sync from phone to server, then
| just go with PhotoSync. You can set up a simple SFTP
| connection so you don't even need anything on the server.
|
| Immich is great if you want to be able to delete things
| from your phone to save space and still have access to all
| your content served from Immich on your server though.
| nicbou wrote:
| This seems a lot better, thanks for the suggestion.
| quietsegfault wrote:
| > Disable Advanced Data Protection
|
| Nope, bzzzzt, wrong!
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| That's E2E encryption, right? Wouldn't you just end up with a
| lot of unreadable files if you didn't turn it off before
| running this downloader?
| nik_0_0 wrote:
| This is awesome! This might be a great replacement to attempting
| to get the Windows app to work. Has anyone had luck with the
| iCloud app on windows?
|
| Similar to some other folks in this thread I have ~2TB of iCloud
| data, a Macbook with far less than 2TB of space, an external hard
| drive somewhere with the external Photo Library that I need to
| plug in if I want to look at photos on the Macbook, and a Windows
| desktop with 10TB+ of rusty disks.
|
| I was excited when they added the iCloud app + iCloud photos to
| Windows, but it never seems to catch up or finish what it is
| doing. It appears to be almost constantly download at 50MB/s,
| stressing both disk & internet, and yet navigating to the folder
| reveals that they are all 'available when online'.
|
| It seems like there is not an option in Windows to actually grab
| everything in full quality (actually now that I look at it - its
| gotten to 944GB on disk / 1.91TB total, so it is getting there.)
|
| I guess a real question - with these photos finally on a Windows
| desktop - is there a better photo browser than Microsoft photos
| that can show the HEIC and the Live Photo?
| lkmill wrote:
| immich (self hosted photos app, https://immich.app/) "stacks"
| live photos with their videos
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| I used to use the Photos desktop app to move my photos ("select
| from the app and drop into a folder somewhere" worked best) to a
| separate folder a lot (and regularly) until I started using ente.
| Now ente not only backs up to their e2ee cloud but its desktop
| app keeps those media synced to the OS of my choice on my laptop.
|
| But I can still not escape Apple's gonorrhoeic naming and
| organisation.
|
| Pro: FOSS of course; it works, with limitations (that's mostly
| Apple) and glitches (that's entirely ente)
|
| Cons: really subpar non-native apps (desktop app is quite a dumb
| app as well) :( (and barely and useful additional features that
| lets a user do some batch/organisational changes or so)
| gerdemb wrote:
| HN disclosure: I'm the author of Photos Backup Anywhere, but this
| thread mirrors the exact issues that pushed me to write it.
|
| One thing that surprised me when digging into Apple Photos is how
| much state isn't represented by just files-on-disk. Albums, Live
| Photos (paired assets), bursts, slo-mo, edits, and even "simple"
| things like adjusted capture dates are all tracked separately,
| and most export/backup tools end up flattening or partially
| reconstructing that on restore.
|
| The approach I took was to treat Photos as the source of truth
| and verify restored items against it, rather than assuming
| filesystem metadata is enough. As far as I know, this is the only
| tool that restores albums and correctly round-trips all Photos
| item types while preserving location data, creation dates, and
| modification dates when restoring back into Photos.
|
| Project page is here if it's useful: https://photosbackup.app/
|
| Happy to explain details if anyone's curious -- there are a lot
| of sharp edges in Photos once you go beyond "export originals".
| SSLy wrote:
| have you looked at parachute backup? they also boast ability to
| backup the more mercurial types of iPhotos data.
| gerdemb wrote:
| Backing up "mercurial" Photos data is only half the problem.
| The tricky part is restoring it in a way Photos actually
| recognizes as equivalent to the original library state.
| Photos Backup Anywhere restore works by re-importing items
| while explicitly reapplying Photos-level attributes: paired
| assets for Live Photos, burst membership and picks, slo-mo
| metadata, edits, locations, adjusted capture dates, and then
| reconstructing albums after the items exist again in the
| library.
|
| In other words, the filesystem copy isn't treated as the
| source of truth. The restore verifies items against what was
| backed up and only then rebuilds higher-level structure like
| albums. That's the piece I didn't see addressed elsewhere,
| and what originally motivated me to build it.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Thanks for commenting, do you support S3 compatible targets?
| Backblaze B2, for example.
| gerdemb wrote:
| Not directly, no. If you can mount the S3 target as a drive,
| it can be used as a backup destination.
| open_ wrote:
| My current process for offloading photos off the iPhone is to
| copy them in subsequent batches of '0-9999' from the 'Image
| Capture' app.
|
| This is because I usually have far more than 10K photos and
| apple starts renaming the files after 9999 as 00001(1) for the
| rest. This is pretty undesirable.
|
| Is there a way for me to export unmodified raw/jpeg/live/videos
| off the iphone to an external drive without a macbook with a
| large enough ssd, and wanting to use icloud as an intermediate
| bottleneck?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I did it on Linux once I extracted them all as-is in the
| strange storage way that iOS stores them but I dont recall
| steps to make it mount the drive.
| open_ wrote:
| That would be perfect, I might chase down this path again.
| It's been a while since I've tried to directly mount the
| iphone as a drive on linux.
| zerkten wrote:
| Does the PhotoSync app permit that? I use it to copy files to
| my NAS but it has some USB-related options I never explored.
| I used to use Image Capture but heard of PhotoSync and have
| never looked back.
| open_ wrote:
| That looks like it might do the trick. I feel like this
| should be something possible only using first party apps
| but I'll take it! Thanks.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I use and like PhotoSync but I thought it doesn't export
| unmodified originals but your edited versions. Personally
| I like this behavior better but that might not be what
| you want?
|
| I'm not sure Apple allows any third party app to access
| the unmodified originals. Imagine you crop a photo to
| remove some embarrassing part. A third-party app can just
| recover that? What a privacy risk.
|
| Of course this won't matter if you don't do any photo
| editing on iOS.
| zerkten wrote:
| It's right to question this. I had taken
| https://www.photosync-
| app.com/support/basics/answers/does-ph... ("PhotoSync
| transfers the original, unaltered images including all
| EXIF and GPS data") on face value without thinking of all
| of the iCloud behavior. Even limited copies would suffice
| in my case, but that's insufficient for others.
| darknavi wrote:
| With Photosync I have our photos export to my NAS and have
| it update the file names with the timestamp + original file
| name, which makes it so much more sane to sort through.
|
| Example:
|
| Original: IMG_9999.JPG
|
| Server-side file: 2015.01.15__IMG_9999__.JPG
| m463 wrote:
| I use libimobiledevice on linux
|
| plug iphone into usb. lsusb should show it.
|
| I backup my photos with: sudo ifuse -o
| allow_other /mnt rsync -a /mnt/DCIM <photos-dir>
| sudo umount /mnt
|
| Actually, I backup all of /mnt not just DCIM, but that answer
| is for you. I also backup the entire phone with:
| sudo idevicebackup2 backup <backup-dir>
|
| but in this form it either does the photos as data files, or
| doesn't back them up. I think it is a complete backup.
| yardstick wrote:
| Do you take into account the iPhone not holding the
| original images of every photo? It will offload originals
| and just keep thumbnails if the library is too large.
|
| Mine is approaching 1.5TB, I've got no hope of keeping that
| all on an iPhone, and also no guarantee that any given
| photo is fully available locally.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| Aren't there hooks on the filesystem layer that downloads
| them when you access them? E.g I can browse via terminal
| to my iCloud Drive somehow and cat etc works on files
| which aren't local (after locking to download them
| first).
| thw_9a83c wrote:
| > Do you take into account the iPhone not holding the
| original images of every photo?
|
| If you have enough storage space on your iPhone, you can
| select "Download and Keep Originals" in the photo app
| settings.
| m463 wrote:
| I think the originals and edits are both there.
|
| I don't know about space-optimized storage on-phone. I
| know one setting for transfer to mac or pc - I have it
| set to "keep originals" instead of "automatic". There
| might be other settings I'm not aware of.
|
| EDIT: actually, there are other directories (under /mnt
| but outside DCIM in my example) that seem to have other
| photo stuff, maybe edits? ymmv
| thw_9a83c wrote:
| > My current process for offloading photos off the iPhone
|
| I'm not sure about Linux, but my workflow on Windows and
| MacOS is to frequently back up my iPhone locally (which you
| should do anyway because few incorrect PINs can security lock
| your phone [1]) and use utility like backup extractor (e.g.
| [2] but there are many others) to extract all photos from the
| backup. This effectively removes the need to use iCloud.
|
| [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/105090?device-
| type=iphone
|
| [2]: https://github.com/joz-k/ios_backup_extractor
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I have taken time to slowly extract photos from old androids
| and its such a nightmare, and if you cant get a meaningful
| interface to load you have to resort to tooling that scrapes
| the whole drive and hope it grabs everything.
| s4mbh4 wrote:
| My current workflow for this is to install the 'simpleSSHD'
| app on the android phone and rsync the files off at full
| network speed.
|
| The sshd running on the phone also supports key based auth ,
| so it's pretty simple to automate.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Yeah but for some phones the storage is full ;) I had to
| figure out how to remove just enough to root it and then
| just adb in for one phone then I learned that if I extract
| too quickly it gives up the ghost so I have to add a delay
| snorlax100 wrote:
| Love this app! Kudos
| supermatt wrote:
| Is the app bound to the purchasers iCloud, or can I also use it
| to download my partners images?
| wappieslurkz wrote:
| Thanks for creating this amazing tool. A requirement for it to
| work is disabling "Advanced Data Protection". What are the
| implications of doing this?
| gerdemb wrote:
| That's a good question. To be completely honest, I don't know
| much about Advanced Data Protection myself, and I didn't do
| anything specific in the app to detect or interact with it.
|
| I'm actually curious: how did you discover that it doesn't
| work when Advanced Data Protection is enabled? Was it through
| an error message, incomplete backups, or something else you
| noticed?
| wappieslurkz wrote:
| I did not discover it, disabling ADP is listed under
| "iCloud Prerequisites" on the/your GitHub page.
| klausa wrote:
| The app that the person you're replying to ('gerdemb)
| created (Photos Backup Anywhere) is different than the
| open-source CLI tool that is the HN submission
| (icloud_photos_downloader).
| BeastMachine wrote:
| Pretty severe -- ADP allows users to store data with e2e
| encryption.
|
| Disabling ADP is a pretty serious* thing to do -- and pretty
| disappointing since I was interested in the product. Since
| it's OSS though this might be something that can be worked
| around in the future.
| torarnv wrote:
| Awesome! Thanks for posting, I've been looking for exactly this
| kind of project that takes end to end pristine restoration
| seriously.
|
| The FAQ states you back up the originals as plain images files
| in YYYY/MM/DD format, which is great for integration with other
| tools. What about metadata? Is it in a format that lends to
| integration with other tools, say if you stop
| developing/supporting your app for some reason?
| gerdemb wrote:
| Metadata is stored in an SQLite database alongside the backed
| up files. The format is not documented, but should be self
| explanatory if you examine the schema.
| torarnv wrote:
| Excellent, thanks!
| hackeman300 wrote:
| If you manually edit the date on a photo, is that also stored
| separately from the image file itself? Wondering because I've
| noticed photos I've backed up to Immich from iOS photos don't
| respect that edited date and reflect whatever the original date
| was.
|
| I've been thinking about looking into a fix for this since it's
| bugged me a bit.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I'm extremely interested in any process that would allow me to
| create file-system-level backups of individual photos. Will
| your tool do that?
| scoot wrote:
| This looks interesting. Can I use it to back up photos from one
| (old) photo library, and restore them into another (newer) one?
| rykc wrote:
| Wish I'd seen this 3 days ago. Needed to backup our Shared
| Library and did the following (about 10K photos/videos at 300gb,
| had enough space so full downloaded to MacBook, not optimize. 1.
| Repair iPhoto library, (Wait 24 hrs to re-sync to iCloud) -
| initially looks like it moved all photos to personal. 2. Select
| small chunks, by year worked well enough - selecting All gave me
| the spinning ball. Then export unmodified to external hdd into
| folders organized by year. 3. Moved entire photo library file to
| another external hdd. 4. Open iPhoto and select external hdd
| library as primary library, let it re-sync to iCloud (Wait 24
| hrs). iPhoto now running off external HDD library and I'll backup
| to separate external HDD monthly. Repair function and wired
| Ethernet connection were biggest game changers to previous
| attempts.
| nathancahill wrote:
| Is there any difference in moving Photos Library.photoslibrary
| to an external HDD and then pointing Photos.app at that?
| rykc wrote:
| Not in my experience, previously ran it setup externally with
| a shared library for at least a year or longer,
| https://support.apple.com/en-ca/108345. Typically I backup to
| external drive 2 ways, copy of library itself and unmodified
| export, only had to go through above after I needed to
| rebuild the laptop. OP app and or https://photosbackup.app/ ,
| seems like they might enhance my setup, will have to take a
| closer look.
| jaffa2 wrote:
| There's some technical reason (or non-reason) why Mac OS does
| not accept the System photolibrary on an external disk. It
| prevents certain things from happening which may or may not
| mater to you. Otherwise you can switch librarys by holding
| Option during photo bootup.
| d1l wrote:
| Fuck, my wife got a notice that she would have to increase her
| iCloud storage so last week began the process of ordering a
| backup of all her pictures so I could get them off iCloud and
| organized on some drives at home. We got 12 zips of the pictures
| along with csv's and some metadata, and I literally just finished
| iterating on the script to sort them into year-based folders and
| convert all the HEIC shit into JPG. It's running literally right
| now.
|
| Guess I should've searched harder!
| aebot wrote:
| Ok https://aionlywebsite.pythonanywhere.com/
| monksy wrote:
| If you are already in the progress of downloading all of your
| photos, this is a great time to consider completely switching
| over to Immich.
|
| It's great!
| slimebot80 wrote:
| iCloud Photos.app seems to not be able to show some photos
|
| But Photometor.app (owned by Apple) can...
|
| So that's a little annoying... I wish I had more visibility on
| photos not showing up in Photos.app, and what it is that stops it
| showing them
| whatever1 wrote:
| Why did Apple invent this abomination of a system for storing
| photos?
|
| We have had file systems for decades. They work well. They sync
| trivially.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, the Photos app stores originals on disk
| and then uses a sqlite database to track metadata (and maybe
| edits to photos as well, given that it has the originals).
| Seems reasonable to me.
| mvkel wrote:
| Incredible. I have such a hacked-together system to get my iCloud
| Photos backed up to an external drive while not filling my main
| laptop drive. This would be even better.
| mvkel wrote:
| Related: does anyone know of a way to delete the original videos
| on trimmed ones? Apparently all edits to videos are non-
| destructive, so the 10-minute video that I trimmed to 2 seconds
| still takes up 8gb.
| reader9274 wrote:
| Yeah, choose "Save Video as New Clip" and then delete the
| original.
| akssri wrote:
| For those of you on Android / PC-Mac - Syncthing is an excellent
| tool for P2P syncing between multiple devices (it works over NAT
| and IPV6 too!).
| jasonkester wrote:
| I was there until I saw this feature:
|
| _Automatic de-duplication of photos with the same name_
|
| I recently went through a year's worth of photos from my wife's
| phone, and found three distinct "img_0001.jpg"'s just in that
| single year. Apple's naming convention is so short sighted that
| I'd be terrified letting a piece of software try to dedupe it "by
| name "
| j16sdiz wrote:
| > ... Apple's naming convention.
|
| No, it is not. It came from DCF standard that predates smart
| phones.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_rule_for_Camera_File_sy...
| j16sdiz wrote:
| The 4 digits numbers are, of cause, came from the 8.3 file
| name length constraint. Gonna love CP/M.
| jasonkester wrote:
| Replying to myself to tell me that I'm wrong.
|
| I'm running this on my icloud photos now, and it seems to be
| dropping them nicely into folders by year and month:
|
| D:\Pictures\icpd\2026\01\01
|
| ... so my wife will need to step up her game and start taking
| 10,000 photos a month before I run afoul of this.
| cleanexit0 wrote:
| This looks useful. I ran into a very similar problem recently and
| ended up building a small tool for my own use:
| https://github.com/cleanexit0/darwin-photos
|
| It's macOS-only and intentionally minimal -- the goal is just to
| download originals from iCloud Photos to disk without syncing
| everything into Photos.app first.
|
| To be clear on limitations: it doesn't preserve albums or other
| metadata yet, and it's not meant to replace more full-featured
| tools. It's mainly for the "I just want my photos off iCloud for
| backup" case.
|
| Reading the comments here, it sounds like metadata preservation
| is a big pain point for many people -- I'd be curious whether
| that's the first thing folks would want added, or if simple bulk
| export already covers most needs.
| Razengan wrote:
| It's fucking amazing sometimes how the Mac/iOS Photos app can't
| download a photo or small video for several minutes but you can
| easily watch YouTube on the same connection.
|
| And it took Apple YEARS to give us a "Keep Downloaded" option for
| iCloud Drive documents in Finder.
|
| And it's been years since I read any ebooks because the damn
| Mac/iOS Books app keeps removing my downloaded books even though
| I have several GBs of storage space left.
|
| Goddamn Tim Cook and the other execs, do they even ever use their
| own products at all?
| nathan_f77 wrote:
| Nice to see my project on Hacker News! I started this almost 10
| years ago and haven't been involved with maintenance for a long
| time, but I'm glad that people are still finding it useful.
| thw_9a83c wrote:
| From the project describtion: "Looking for MAINTAINER for this
| project"
|
| Honestly, Apple should officially maintain tools like this.
| However, for obvious reasons, such as the iCloud subscription
| revenue model, Apple will not do it. In fact, Apple may even make
| life harder for such tools.
| xattt wrote:
| I'm in the midst of a backup-to-local project and, with this
| post to HN, I'm worried an Apple project manager will be on a
| mission this morning to get his team to cripple this software.
| blindriver wrote:
| Is there no worry in giving the app your password? I would never
| just give my password, especially my Apple account password to a
| random app. Is this program reliable? However it looks like a
| program that I want to use.
| brianzelip wrote:
| Anyone got any tips for programmatically downloading photos in a
| shared album?
| realityfactchex wrote:
| It is no fun to have old iCloud photos deleted unexpectedly.
| Apple has provided plenty of footguns, even if they really are
| user errors. For examples: (1) during device restores and (2)
| premium subscription management fumbles.
|
| Product idea: Apple should offer a paid service to restore the
| "old backups" of photos that are no longer accessible via iCloud
| UI/API, which were soft-removed for missing the subscription
| quota or whatever, if Apple happens to have that data tucked away
| in cold storage somewhere.
|
| Case in point, I had some c. 2016 era photos in iMessages that I
| thought I handled right to not lose from iCloud, but they are
| apparently nowhere to be found in iCloud API based on recent
| checks. More than mildly irritating.
|
| I should have used an iCloud photos backup tool like this much
| sooner.
|
| Print what you want to keep onto archival paper with archival
| dyes. Everything else will atrophy.
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