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Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

andykong.org

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Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#81

Post by chrismeller »

Dalewyn wrote: post #69
frostix wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Differential backups or any sort of versioning seemed like one of the most obvious culprits (that and or total redundant storage to preserve the file) but the issue with all of this is it’s entirely opaque. Ultimately you’re increasingly tethered to some service for your storage that you pay for periodically based on total storage yet you have little-to-no information how to best optimize that storage if you want to…

>So as a consumer, do I just wave my hands and keep throwing more and more money at the problem, Yes. I can go and buy 1TB of Microsoft OneDrive or 2TB of Google Drive for less than a Franklin a year, and most people won't even need 1TB let alone 2TB. Both Microsoft and Google also offer 100GB plans for a Jackson a year, which is what I purchase myself. The average person can get by paying a Washington per month to A…

This is the same argument behind paying for a streaming service. Could I "find" everything I want to watch somewhere else and maintain it myself on a Plex server? Sure, but the cost-benefit analysis just doesn't make sense to me.

Particularly the older I get the more I value my finite free time. Throwing $20 at something to remove a problem that would take me hours (not to mention a large startup cost) to do myself is just an obvious choice.

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#82

Post by arthurmorgan »

FaridIO wrote: post #73

Additionally, if you take a 4MB photo and add it to a shared album with 5 people, those 5 people all have to use up 4MB from their storage. Instead of reusing the same image and having pointers to it, it looks like it's "copied".

Shared Albums don't count against your iCloud Storage.

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#83

Post by ebiester »

Dalewyn wrote: post #69
frostix wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Differential backups or any sort of versioning seemed like one of the most obvious culprits (that and or total redundant storage to preserve the file) but the issue with all of this is it’s entirely opaque. Ultimately you’re increasingly tethered to some service for your storage that you pay for periodically based on total storage yet you have little-to-no information how to best optimize that storage if you want to…

>So as a consumer, do I just wave my hands and keep throwing more and more money at the problem, Yes. I can go and buy 1TB of Microsoft OneDrive or 2TB of Google Drive for less than a Franklin a year, and most people won't even need 1TB let alone 2TB. Both Microsoft and Google also offer 100GB plans for a Jackson a year, which is what I purchase myself. The average person can get by paying a Washington per month to A…

Now, consider a world where you are making $42,000 a year. That's 20 dollars an hour and a very common wage. How do they handle the same when there are so many competing Franklins for them?

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#84

Post by a_vanderbilt »

Dalewyn wrote: post #69
frostix wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Differential backups or any sort of versioning seemed like one of the most obvious culprits (that and or total redundant storage to preserve the file) but the issue with all of this is it’s entirely opaque. Ultimately you’re increasingly tethered to some service for your storage that you pay for periodically based on total storage yet you have little-to-no information how to best optimize that storage if you want to…

>So as a consumer, do I just wave my hands and keep throwing more and more money at the problem, Yes. I can go and buy 1TB of Microsoft OneDrive or 2TB of Google Drive for less than a Franklin a year, and most people won't even need 1TB let alone 2TB. Both Microsoft and Google also offer 100GB plans for a Jackson a year, which is what I purchase myself. The average person can get by paying a Washington per month to A…

Hackers don't understand something that regular people more readily do: It works, it's cheap, and I'm paying for the convenience. We can all have our ideals about how tech should be, but these choices are driven by practicality.

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#85

Post by sandreas »

Alifatisk wrote: post #51
sandreas wrote: post #40

That's one of the reasons I self-host. I just don't trust the cloud providers regarding clarity and transparency... even if my self-hosted solution was far less reliable, less secure and less performant (I imagine it's not ;), I probably wouldn't change. I personally use immich[1], a very complete solution with iOS / Android App, Server-Component and Sync / Backup option. [1]: https://immich.app/

It looks interesting but the warning at the top tells me I should wait for it to become more stable?

Yeah, that's what I thought... but using it for 6 months now they have been pretty reliable regarding upgrades and new features.

The features I appreciate the most are:

  - Auto-Synchronisation on Android AND iOS (this is hard to find in any other app)
  - Photo sharing (Accounts can have partners to share all their photos with - ideal for me and my wife)
  - Deduplication
  - The Web Interface
The feature I miss the most is tags[1].

Once the app stopped working but there was a clear message on the repository / homepage that the server has to be upgraded. Since it is docker based, it was very easy to upgrade without losing any data. Same applies for backup...

So if you ask me, there is no need to worry - but I would not use it as only option to store my photos and it does not replace an (off-site)-backup.

[1]: https://github.com/immich-app/immich/discussions/1651#discus...

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#86

Post by eertami »

cosentiyes wrote: post #77
saagarjha wrote: post #6

I kind of hate opaque cloud solutions like this, because their storage usage is inscrutable and their interfaces are basically never optimized to help you clear things out. Whether that’s intentional and malicious or just not a priority, I don’t really care, I just want to be in control of the stuff I’m using. I have a very similar issue with iMessage in iCloud, and unlike photos, there’s no web interface. You have t…

I have the same problem on iMessage. iCloud reports 7+gb of message storage being consumed, but each of my devices and my top conversations only report 1-2gb of content. I haven't found a way to force sync the missing content so I'm stuck paying the $1/month plan.

> I haven't found a way to force sync the missing content so I'm stuck paying the $1/month plan.

And this is why they (and many companies) behave this way, there's no incentive to fix a problem that you will just pay them more money to fix. Fixing the bug means reduced revenue. Complaining about the problem sadly won't help, you can only stop using the app and stop buying their products.

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#87

Post by icebergonfire »

cianmm wrote: post #4

Interesting article. I have my own problem, that caused me to have to upgrade my iCloud plan, and thus may not be a high priority fix for Apple. If you shoot RAW+JPEG (not a super-rare thing to do, for photo enthusiasts) then Apple Photos links the two images. Which is useful, rather than having a bunch of kinda-duplicates littering your library you can easily toggle between RAW and JPEG. But this combining, along wi…

Not in your situation at this point, but as a photo nerd I will eventually be so I took to Google.

> Any method that I've found to clean them up (exporting the originals, deleting them from the library, and then re-importing the JPEGs only seems easiest) will lose all of the years of metadata that I've built up in the library.

Apparently when you File/Export Unmodified Originals it will export the RAW+HEIC and a separate sidecar file containing the metadata. You can then move the RAW file away and import the HEIC file, which will autoimport the sidecar metadata file too.

You lose edits though, although it seems you can "copy edits" somehow. Surely a technically inclined person can AppleScript their way through this...

Yet it seems needlessly cumbersome and should be a built-in function in Photos.app, it's clearly not prioritized because it helps funnel people into higher iCloud tiers.

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#88

Post by crossroadsguy »

There’s will be a time when there will be many open (or relatively more open) devices like FairPhone et cetera; and OSes that do not track users and suffocate you with dark patterns and hostility all around - like Graphene and Lineage; and hopefully they’d all be able to join their hands together and not reimplement the wheels of N types for the 1000th time all incompatible with each other. Hope is that there will be services and softwares on top of that spec and API of these OSes that will be the user’s choice to pick - for contact, for calendar, SMS, IM, call , media, sync, backup, device account management etc.

And such devices will be widely available, also in non-first world countries, with proper OEM warranties and support. Hell, a local manufacturer can just build for that spec.

I know it’s like a wishful dream. But if this happens, and when this happens, I hope a lot of us will be able to breathe free and hopefully would be candidly able to shit upon legacies of those so called fucking visionaries, who were barely not subhuman and were just rather pathetic jerks, who ensured such shit-show of walled gardens and opaquely implemented utterly inferior systems where users go and get stuck in one of the two houses of the duopoly to experience a lot of shitty things including, but not limited to, some variation of Stockholm syndrome and clear and conscious apologism.

Why? Because neither of the two is acceptably good and they have become so big and they have closed it down so much that nobody else can even make a dent even if they try. And they try!

So yeah, until then I will rant and feel shitty about both my iPhone 14 (as they call it - my “daily driver”) and Pixel 5a (my bread and butter phone; form factor wise less shitty one though).

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#89

Post by Ayesh »

ylk wrote: post #5
cianmm wrote: post #4

Interesting article. I have my own problem, that caused me to have to upgrade my iCloud plan, and thus may not be a high priority fix for Apple. If you shoot RAW+JPEG (not a super-rare thing to do, for photo enthusiasts) then Apple Photos links the two images. Which is useful, rather than having a bunch of kinda-duplicates littering your library you can easily toggle between RAW and JPEG. But this combining, along wi…

Possibly stupid question: why can’t the metadata be exported and imported? Is there other metadata aside from the exif data? Or does Apple not export all of it? And in case you’re talking about additional features like face recognition, doesn’t the app do that again once you imported the jpeg?

Im not in Apple ecosystem at all, so I don't have an answer to your question.

But in RAW/JPG world, the metadata and edits is already a solved problem with Sidecar files + EXIF data. Sure, EXIF fields are kinda messy but I'm sure it's better than Apple has rolled by their own.

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