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Since we’re talking about it: anyone backing up their iCloud photos? If so, how?

by baxtr 18d ago

mmazzarolo 18d ago
I have a weird setup lol. I use a shared photos library with my partner (so that we have all family photos together) and have a MacBook Air that has Photos being download in raw quality and backups then via Time Machine on a Synology NAS. Plus, Synology photo sync on my iPhone (backing up on my NAS separately from Time Machine) AND Google Photos on my partner’s (syncing on Google Photos). Yes it’s horrible, just never had time to clean I up properly but I prefer to have them in multiple cloud locations and locally for now than optimise for having a clean setup.
fragmede 18d ago
Arq. https://www.arqbackup.com/ https://www.arqbackup.com/
undebuggable 18d ago
From iPhone into local machine through LocalSend or AirDrop, then your usual favorite backup pipeline.
- mrngld 17d ago
  That's tedious. Can't believe nobody mentioned Parachute Backup yet. It had a moment in the sun earlier this year or last year when it first started getting traction. I have a Mac, so not just an iPhone, so I use Arq there, it materializes the iCloud stuff as necessary for backup. But if all you have is an iPhone or iPad along with an external disk, NAS or whatever, Parachute Backup will do backups to a variety of destinations.
unanimous 17d ago
When I was using Ubuntu, I would plug my phone into my laptop and run this small script: https://gist.github.com/wheelercj/8cce112fc8ee55fd4858847a526ff69f https://gist.github.com/wheelercj/8cce112fc8ee55fd4858847a52... It's mainly just rsync. When the phone was plugged in, the photos were accessible at a path like "/run/user/1000/gvfs/gphoto2:host=Apple_Inc._iPhone_abc123/". Now I use Time Machine, but I still need to check whether it includes iCloud photos.
- lloydatkinson 17d ago
  Does this include all the image metadata and who knows what else?
  - unanimous 17d ago
    While I haven't tested for that myself, the script should keep pretty much everything including image metadata. I just made a small change so that it also keeps extended attributes in case any image-related metadata is there. The script currently requires changing one or two folder paths at the top (more details in the script).
reddalo 17d ago
It's not iCloud Photos, in my case it's Google Photos. But I keep a copy of all my photos in a self-hosted instance of Immich [1], which I then back up to a Hetzner Storage Box using Backrest [2]. So I end up with 3 copies of all my photos, on 3 different providers (I mean... 2 different providers plus my homelab disk). [1] https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/ [2] https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest
nodar86 17d ago
I self-host Immich, and run the iPhone app to back up my photos. I used this guide [0] for the initial import. [0]: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/21251 https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/21251
wallst07 17d ago
Amazing question with nobody really answering your question 100%. The answer is : it's hard. If you only have a iphone and more photos on your icloud than can fit on your phone, you're kinda screwed if you don't know what you're doing. AFAIK Apple makes it very difficult to get all your icloud photos bulk downloaded, original quality off icloud. Google is no better. It's much easier to start backing up from the beginning but once you're stuck on icloud it's hard.
- pariainterpares 17d ago
  Not a very good answer. If you have a Mac with sufficient storage, you can just enable iCloud to store photos locally, then export them. That could miss some data (I think descriptions you set for a photo were not exported the last time I checked), but it is most of the data.
  - skylurk 17d ago
    Do you need to export them? Can you not copy the library file to a different drive?
  - wallst07 16d ago
    I didn't answer because it's had and I'd rather not give a incorrect answer. And, I may have conflated issues: Iphone Storage < Icloud storage vs opposite way.
- doubled112 17d ago
  I seem to remember being able to select all of the photos in iCloud in a browser and clicking download. It zips them and it worked. I would imagine this doesn't work well after a certain amount of data. I’m also not sure they were the originals.
- TeMPOraL 17d ago
  Yup. Only reason I'm on OneDrive is that they don't mess with photos and their metadata. For now, at least. I guess it's because the core offering is still some version of "a folder that syncs", and the photo gallery is just a view bolted on top. I steer clear of any solutions scoped to photos only, as it always turns out they either screw you up by reducing quality and throwing away the originals, or trying to lock you in by only offering metadata they keep in a database they will not let you export.
CountGeek 17d ago
I have successfully used this about 2 years ago from a Synology to perform a one-time backup (download) of about 380GB of photos and videos from my iCloud account - https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_downloader https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...
dml2135 17d ago
Time Machine on my Mac
darkwater 17d ago
From iPhone to the family's Immich instance on a RAID array and from there to Backblaze

Since we’re talking about it: anyone backing up their iCloud photos? If so, how?

by baxtr 18d ago

Since we’re talking about it: anyone backing up their iCloud photos? If so, how?

I have a weird setup lol. I use a shared photos library with my partner (so that we have all family photos together) and have a MacBook Air that has Photos being download in raw quality and backups then via Time Machine on a Synology NAS. Plus, Synology photo sync on my iPhone (backing up on my NAS separately from Time Machine) AND Google Photos on my partner’s (syncing on Google Photos). Yes it’s horrible, just never had time to clean I up properly but I prefer to have them in multiple cloud locations and locally for now than optimise for having a clean setup.

fragmede 18d ago

Arq. https://www.arqbackup.com/ https://www.arqbackup.com/

undebuggable 18d ago

From iPhone into local machine through LocalSend or AirDrop, then your usual favorite backup pipeline.

mrngld 17d ago
That's tedious. Can't believe nobody mentioned Parachute Backup yet. It had a moment in the sun earlier this year or last year when it first started getting traction. I have a Mac, so not just an iPhone, so I use Arq there, it materializes the iCloud stuff as necessary for backup. But if all you have is an iPhone or iPad along with an external disk, NAS or whatever, Parachute Backup will do backups to a variety of destinations.

unanimous 17d ago

When I was using Ubuntu, I would plug my phone into my laptop and run this small script: https://gist.github.com/wheelercj/8cce112fc8ee55fd4858847a526ff69f https://gist.github.com/wheelercj/8cce112fc8ee55fd4858847a52... It's mainly just rsync. When the phone was plugged in, the photos were accessible at a path like "/run/user/1000/gvfs/gphoto2:host=Apple_Inc._iPhone_abc123/". Now I use Time Machine, but I still need to check whether it includes iCloud photos.

lloydatkinson 17d ago
Does this include all the image metadata and who knows what else?
- unanimous 17d ago
  While I haven't tested for that myself, the script should keep pretty much everything including image metadata. I just made a small change so that it also keeps extended attributes in case any image-related metadata is there. The script currently requires changing one or two folder paths at the top (more details in the script).

reddalo 17d ago

It's not iCloud Photos, in my case it's Google Photos. But I keep a copy of all my photos in a self-hosted instance of Immich [1], which I then back up to a Hetzner Storage Box using Backrest [2]. So I end up with 3 copies of all my photos, on 3 different providers (I mean... 2 different providers plus my homelab disk). [1] https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/ [2] https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest

nodar86 17d ago

I self-host Immich, and run the iPhone app to back up my photos. I used this guide [0] for the initial import. [0]: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/21251 https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/21251

wallst07 17d ago

Amazing question with nobody really answering your question 100%. The answer is : it's hard. If you only have a iphone and more photos on your icloud than can fit on your phone, you're kinda screwed if you don't know what you're doing. AFAIK Apple makes it very difficult to get all your icloud photos bulk downloaded, original quality off icloud. Google is no better. It's much easier to start backing up from the beginning but once you're stuck on icloud it's hard.

pariainterpares 17d ago
Not a very good answer. If you have a Mac with sufficient storage, you can just enable iCloud to store photos locally, then export them. That could miss some data (I think descriptions you set for a photo were not exported the last time I checked), but it is most of the data.
- skylurk 17d ago
  Do you need to export them? Can you not copy the library file to a different drive?
- wallst07 16d ago
  I didn't answer because it's had and I'd rather not give a incorrect answer. And, I may have conflated issues: Iphone Storage < Icloud storage vs opposite way.
doubled112 17d ago
I seem to remember being able to select all of the photos in iCloud in a browser and clicking download. It zips them and it worked. I would imagine this doesn't work well after a certain amount of data. I’m also not sure they were the originals.
TeMPOraL 17d ago
Yup. Only reason I'm on OneDrive is that they don't mess with photos and their metadata. For now, at least. I guess it's because the core offering is still some version of "a folder that syncs", and the photo gallery is just a view bolted on top. I steer clear of any solutions scoped to photos only, as it always turns out they either screw you up by reducing quality and throwing away the originals, or trying to lock you in by only offering metadata they keep in a database they will not let you export.

CountGeek 17d ago

I have successfully used this about 2 years ago from a Synology to perform a one-time backup (download) of about 380GB of photos and videos from my iCloud account - https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_downloader https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

dml2135 17d ago

Time Machine on my Mac

darkwater 17d ago

From iPhone to the family's Immich instance on a RAID array and from there to Backblaze