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iCloud Photos Downloader

653 points by reconnecting 10mo ago

reconnecting 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
    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 10mo ago
      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 10mo ago
        You can use the Photos app on your Mac and download originals
      - mr_toad 10mo ago
        There are two options in the file menu - you can export the originals, and there is an option to export them as .jpg.
        reconnecting 10mo ago
        From iPhotos (Photos) app to hard drive. Subject is to download photos from iCloud.
        lostlogin 10mo ago
        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/mac https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/photos/phtf5e48489c/ma...
      - coder543 10mo ago
        Yes, there is a button on Mac: https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/use-icloud-photos-phtf5e48489c/mac#:~:text=one%2E-,Turn,in%20iCloud 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 10mo ago
        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 10mo ago
        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.
      - lostlogin 10mo ago
        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 10mo ago
        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.
        deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
        lostlogin 10mo ago
        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 10mo ago
        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 10mo ago
        Oh god. I’d forgotten about that tiny dialogue box. 98,281 items to sync. I hope it comes right quickly.
      - wookmaster 10mo ago
        Select all, Files > Export. It's simple to download iCloud Photos.
  - Tempest1981 10mo ago
    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-apple-now-allow-transfer-between-their-photo-cloud-services/ https://www.techzine.eu/news/applications/122196/google-and-... (2023 Data Transfer Initiative (DTI))
- kccqzy 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
    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 10mo ago
      Yes over USB 2.0 until recently.
  - possiblerobot 10mo ago
    +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 10mo ago
      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 10mo ago
        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.
- nemothekid 10mo ago
  I think if you are on PC. But on Mac with the Photos App Cmd+A > File > Export Unmodified Originals
  - reconnecting 10mo ago
    There is no straight way to download photos from iCloud to Mac.
    - wookmaster 10mo ago
      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 10mo ago
      Photos > Settings > iCloud > Download Originals to this Mac.
- reddalo 10mo ago
  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/ https://privacy.apple.com/
  - catskull 10mo ago
    I was able to request a photo dump as a non-EU customer using this link.
  - ireadmevs 10mo ago
    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 10mo ago
      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 10mo ago
      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 10mo ago
      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 10mo ago
    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.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
nashashmi 10mo ago
Vulnerability hijack incoming with the headline calling for another maintainer
tra3 10mo ago
Does anyone know if there’s a way to self host/impersonate iCloud? I’d like to back my iPhone up locally.
- yrcyrc 10mo ago
  For pictures you can use https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/
- idorosen 10mo ago
  https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse might help.
- nntwozz 10mo ago
  You can do manual backups in macOS using Finder, or iTunes on Windows.
  - Tepix 10mo ago
    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 10mo ago
  Immich is probably the best option
  - mfkp 10mo ago
    Or ente photos: https://ente.io/ https://ente.io/
  - netsharc 10mo ago
    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...
caminanteblanco 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
  Yes... Let me ask my corporate overload and wait 2 weeks for permission to download my family photos.
ericj5 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  Sounds like the contact sheet view is just using square preview thumbails?
- CamperBob2 10mo ago
  All my vertical videos in iCloud show up cropped horizontal for some reason. Turn your phone? /ducks
1love1heart 10mo ago
There is something similar to Google Takeout for Apple Photos. Recently used it to download thousands of photos.
Dachande663 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
This great. I want to switch to android but the only thing stopping me is eight years of photos. No more.
- wrxd 10mo ago
  If your end goal is to move the photos to Google photos have a look at https://support.google.com/photos/answer/10502587?sjid=13067866099870717189-EU https://support.google.com/photos/answer/10502587?sjid=13067...
- neilalexander 10mo ago
  You can go to https://privacy.apple.com 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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  For those in the EU only ?
  - punnerud 10mo ago
    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/ https://privacy.apple.com/
  - j16sdiz 10mo ago
    You can't really file a GDPR request, but the (self-service, web based) download tools works for everybody.
mmh0000 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  > 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 10mo ago
    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 10mo ago
Seems to be looking for a new maintainer. If anyone has the bandwidth, it’s a great piece of software
jeanofthedead 10mo ago
I'm a big fan of Parachute Backup for this purpose. https://parachuteapps.com/parachute https://parachuteapps.com/parachute
- monocularvision 10mo ago
  Do you know if this supports multiple users? Can’t find mention of it in the site.
rgovostes 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
    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.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - varenc 10mo ago
    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 10mo ago
      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.
SilverElfin 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  You absolutely can download your photos, just not via command line like this project enables.
- geekamongus 10mo ago
  You do not need an extra tool to download your photos. This one runs from the command line, though.
- CharlesW 10mo ago
  As is pointed out elsewhere in the thread, there are at three official ways to download your own photos. This complements those.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
Razele 10mo ago
why not use rclone
- porjo 10mo ago
  Because icloudpd supports downloading photos from icloud and rclone does not (yet): https://github.com/rclone/rclone/pull/8734 https://github.com/rclone/rclone/pull/8734
- rsync 10mo ago
  "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 10mo ago
I created this over the holiday break to do mostly the same: https://github.com/rcarmo/PhotosExport https://github.com/rcarmo/PhotosExport ...when you try to export files using the (restricted) APIs we get, it automatically triggers a download.
porjo 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  I use PhotoSync on my phone for this - select which albums to sync where with a rule and away you go.
DHPersonal 10mo ago
Parachute Backup is a tool I use: https://parachuteapps.com/parachute https://parachuteapps.com/parachute
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
ndegruchy 10mo ago
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?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parachute-backup/id6748614170?...
- SilverElfin 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
    I have the same paranoia, so I was happy to learn that someone made an open-source downloader for iCloud.
- malshe 10mo ago
  Thanks for the link
- teamspirit 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
    Advanced Data Protection
  - 8fingerlouie 10mo ago
    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 https://github.com/RhetTbull/osxphotos ^2: https://www.photosync-app.com/home https://www.photosync-app.com/home
jojohack 10mo ago
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/ https://gorch.com/parisfiremap/
submeta 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  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 https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/photos [2] https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/ [3] https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/
  - submeta 10mo ago
    Thank you very much for the detailed reply. I have a Synology NAS, will look into that solution.
qaid 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  > 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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
    Yes, yes, no. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/IOS#Transferring_data https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/IOS#Transferring_data
  - WhyNotHugo 10mo ago
    Yes, yes, and yes. https://whynothugo.nl/journal/2024/12/22/exporting-photos-from-an-iphone/ https://whynothugo.nl/journal/2024/12/22/exporting-photos-fr...
bicepjai 10mo ago
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 https://github.com/boredazfcuk/docker-icloudpd
- stavros 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
    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 10mo ago
      Music? Like a music library? Wouldn't Subsonic be miles better for that?
      - bicepjai 10mo ago
quietsegfault 10mo ago
> Disable Advanced Data Protection Nope, bzzzzt, wrong!
- CamperBob2 10mo ago
  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?
aebot 10mo ago
Ok https://aionlywebsite.pythonanywhere.com/ https://aionlywebsite.pythonanywhere.com/
nik_0_0 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  immich (self hosted photos app, https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/) "stacks" live photos with their videos
crossroadsguy 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
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/ 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 10mo ago
  have you looked at parachute backup? they also boast ability to backup the more mercurial types of iPhotos data.
  - gerdemb 10mo ago
    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 10mo ago
  Thanks for commenting, do you support S3 compatible targets? Backblaze B2, for example.
rykc 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  Is there any difference in moving Photos Library.photoslibrary to an external HDD and then pointing Photos.app at that?
  - rykc 10mo ago
    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 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/ https://photosbackup.app/ , seems like they might enhance my setup, will have to take a closer look.
  - jaffa2 10mo ago
    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 10mo ago
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!
monksy 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  Yeah, choose "Save Video as New Clip" and then delete the original.
akssri 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  > ... 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_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_rule_for_Camera_File_sy...
  - j16sdiz 10mo ago
    The 4 digits numbers are, of cause, came from the 8.3 file name length constraint. Gonna love CP/M.
- jasonkester 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
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 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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
Anyone got any tips for programmatically downloading photos in a shared album?
realityfactchex 10mo ago
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.

653 points by reconnecting 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
    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 10mo ago
      You can use the Photos app on your Mac and download originals
    - mr_toad 10mo ago
      There are two options in the file menu - you can export the originals, and there is an option to export them as .jpg.
      - reconnecting 10mo ago
        From iPhotos (Photos) app to hard drive. Subject is to download photos from iCloud.
        lostlogin 10mo ago
        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/mac https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/photos/phtf5e48489c/ma...
    - coder543 10mo ago
      Yes, there is a button on Mac: https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/use-icloud-photos-phtf5e48489c/mac#:~:text=one%2E-,Turn,in%20iCloud 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 10mo ago
        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 10mo ago
        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.
    - lostlogin 10mo ago
      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 10mo ago
        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.
        deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
        lostlogin 10mo ago
        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 10mo ago
        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 10mo ago
        Oh god. I’d forgotten about that tiny dialogue box. 98,281 items to sync. I hope it comes right quickly.
    - wookmaster 10mo ago
      Select all, Files > Export. It's simple to download iCloud Photos.
- Tempest1981 10mo ago
  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-apple-now-allow-transfer-between-their-photo-cloud-services/ https://www.techzine.eu/news/applications/122196/google-and-... (2023 Data Transfer Initiative (DTI))
kccqzy 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
    Yes over USB 2.0 until recently.
- possiblerobot 10mo ago
  +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 10mo ago
    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 10mo ago
      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.
nemothekid 10mo ago
I think if you are on PC. But on Mac with the Photos App Cmd+A > File > Export Unmodified Originals
- reconnecting 10mo ago
  There is no straight way to download photos from iCloud to Mac.
  - wookmaster 10mo ago
    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 10mo ago
    Photos > Settings > iCloud > Download Originals to this Mac.
reddalo 10mo ago
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/ https://privacy.apple.com/
- catskull 10mo ago
  I was able to request a photo dump as a non-EU customer using this link.
- ireadmevs 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
    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 10mo ago
    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 10mo ago
    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 10mo ago
  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.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

nashashmi 10mo ago

Vulnerability hijack incoming with the headline calling for another maintainer

tra3 10mo ago

Does anyone know if there’s a way to self host/impersonate iCloud? I’d like to back my iPhone up locally.

yrcyrc 10mo ago
For pictures you can use https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/
idorosen 10mo ago
https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse https://github.com/libimobiledevice/ifuse might help.
nntwozz 10mo ago
You can do manual backups in macOS using Finder, or iTunes on Windows.
- Tepix 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
Immich is probably the best option
- mfkp 10mo ago
  Or ente photos: https://ente.io/ https://ente.io/
- netsharc 10mo ago
  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...

caminanteblanco 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
Yes... Let me ask my corporate overload and wait 2 weeks for permission to download my family photos.

ericj5 10mo ago

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 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
Sounds like the contact sheet view is just using square preview thumbails?
CamperBob2 10mo ago
All my vertical videos in iCloud show up cropped horizontal for some reason. Turn your phone? /ducks

1love1heart 10mo ago

There is something similar to Google Takeout for Apple Photos. Recently used it to download thousands of photos.

Dachande663 10mo ago

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 10mo ago

This great. I want to switch to android but the only thing stopping me is eight years of photos. No more.

wrxd 10mo ago
If your end goal is to move the photos to Google photos have a look at https://support.google.com/photos/answer/10502587?sjid=13067866099870717189-EU https://support.google.com/photos/answer/10502587?sjid=13067...
neilalexander 10mo ago
You can go to https://privacy.apple.com 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 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
For those in the EU only ?
- punnerud 10mo ago
  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/ https://privacy.apple.com/
- j16sdiz 10mo ago
  You can't really file a GDPR request, but the (self-service, web based) download tools works for everybody.

mmh0000 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
> 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 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago

Seems to be looking for a new maintainer. If anyone has the bandwidth, it’s a great piece of software

jeanofthedead 10mo ago

I'm a big fan of Parachute Backup for this purpose. https://parachuteapps.com/parachute https://parachuteapps.com/parachute

monocularvision 10mo ago
Do you know if this supports multiple users? Can’t find mention of it in the site.

rgovostes 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  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.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- varenc 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
    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.

SilverElfin 10mo ago

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 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
You absolutely can download your photos, just not via command line like this project enables.
geekamongus 10mo ago
You do not need an extra tool to download your photos. This one runs from the command line, though.
CharlesW 10mo ago
As is pointed out elsewhere in the thread, there are at three official ways to download your own photos. This complements those.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

Razele 10mo ago

why not use rclone

porjo 10mo ago
Because icloudpd supports downloading photos from icloud and rclone does not (yet): https://github.com/rclone/rclone/pull/8734 https://github.com/rclone/rclone/pull/8734
rsync 10mo ago
"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 10mo ago

I created this over the holiday break to do mostly the same: https://github.com/rcarmo/PhotosExport https://github.com/rcarmo/PhotosExport ...when you try to export files using the (restricted) APIs we get, it automatically triggers a download.

porjo 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
I use PhotoSync on my phone for this - select which albums to sync where with a rule and away you go.

DHPersonal 10mo ago

Parachute Backup is a tool I use: https://parachuteapps.com/parachute https://parachuteapps.com/parachute

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

ndegruchy 10mo ago

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?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parachute-backup/id6748614170?...

SilverElfin 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  I have the same paranoia, so I was happy to learn that someone made an open-source downloader for iCloud.
malshe 10mo ago
Thanks for the link
teamspirit 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  Advanced Data Protection
- 8fingerlouie 10mo ago
  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 https://github.com/RhetTbull/osxphotos ^2: https://www.photosync-app.com/home https://www.photosync-app.com/home

jojohack 10mo ago

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/ https://gorch.com/parisfiremap/

submeta 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
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 https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/photos [2] https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/ [3] https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/
- submeta 10mo ago
  Thank you very much for the detailed reply. I have a Synology NAS, will look into that solution.

qaid 10mo ago

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 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
> 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 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  Yes, yes, no. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/IOS#Transferring_data https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/IOS#Transferring_data
- WhyNotHugo 10mo ago
  Yes, yes, and yes. https://whynothugo.nl/journal/2024/12/22/exporting-photos-from-an-iphone/ https://whynothugo.nl/journal/2024/12/22/exporting-photos-fr...

bicepjai 10mo ago

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 https://github.com/boredazfcuk/docker-icloudpd

stavros 10mo ago
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 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
    Music? Like a music library? Wouldn't Subsonic be miles better for that?
    - bicepjai 10mo ago

quietsegfault 10mo ago

> Disable Advanced Data Protection Nope, bzzzzt, wrong!

CamperBob2 10mo ago
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?

aebot 10mo ago

Ok https://aionlywebsite.pythonanywhere.com/ https://aionlywebsite.pythonanywhere.com/

nik_0_0 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
immich (self hosted photos app, https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/) "stacks" live photos with their videos

crossroadsguy 10mo ago

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 10mo ago

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/ 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 10mo ago
have you looked at parachute backup? they also boast ability to backup the more mercurial types of iPhotos data.
- gerdemb 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago
Thanks for commenting, do you support S3 compatible targets? Backblaze B2, for example.

rykc 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
Is there any difference in moving Photos Library.photoslibrary to an external HDD and then pointing Photos.app at that?
- rykc 10mo ago
  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 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/ https://photosbackup.app/ , seems like they might enhance my setup, will have to take a closer look.
- jaffa2 10mo ago
  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 10mo ago

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!

monksy 10mo ago

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 10mo ago

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 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago

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 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
Yeah, choose "Save Video as New Clip" and then delete the original.

akssri 10mo ago

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 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
> ... 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_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_rule_for_Camera_File_sy...
- j16sdiz 10mo ago
  The 4 digits numbers are, of cause, came from the 8.3 file name length constraint. Gonna love CP/M.
jasonkester 10mo ago
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 10mo ago

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 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 10mo ago

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 10mo ago

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 10mo ago

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 10mo ago
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 10mo ago

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 10mo ago

Anyone got any tips for programmatically downloading photos in a shared album?

realityfactchex 10mo ago

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.