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iCloud Photos Downloader

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Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#131

Post by coder543 »

reconnecting wrote: post #130
coder543 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop repeating your incorrect points that are contradicted by everyone else’s real experiences. Yes, new ones will be uploaded. That doesn’t mean old ones won’t also be downloaded.

I have tried 3 different Macs with different versions of macOS prior to looking for a workaround, and everywhere the result is the same: old photos are not downloaded automatically from iCloud, and there is no button to start this process - for this exact reason. Want to prove me wrong? Create a new macOS user and open Photos with your iCloud. It will be empty until you start copying photos from your phone. It will t…

You're arguing with a lot of people who have personally seen this work. You can listen to other people. You can also go to an Apple Store and let them show you what's going wrong here.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#132

Post by jackvalentine »

shireboy wrote: post #68

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 lik…

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

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#133

Post by kimos »

rgovostes wrote: post #35

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 sto…

I’ve used this tool for years and it’s great. But it really saves just the raw data. You’d never get it back in to Apple Photos as nice as when you pulled it out. Metadata is missing. Live Photos come out as an image and a similarly named video. But I treat it as the emergency backup. If some Apple DC burns down or they ban my Apple ID for some reason, at least the photos still exist.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#134

Post by kimos »

porjo wrote: post #67

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.

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.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#135

Post by reconnecting »

coder543 wrote: post #131
reconnecting wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have tried 3 different Macs with different versions of macOS prior to looking for a workaround, and everywhere the result is the same: old photos are not downloaded automatically from iCloud, and there is no button to start this process - for this exact reason. Want to prove me wrong? Create a new macOS user and open Photos with your iCloud. It will be empty until you start copying photos from your phone. It will t…

You're arguing with a lot of people who have personally seen this work. You can listen to other people. You can also go to an Apple Store and let them show you what's going wrong here.

Perhaps no one here has tried to download an entire iCloud library at once, or perhaps size is an issue, but that doesn't change the fact that there is no download button for iCloud Photos and iCloud Photos Downloader simply solves this. That's what this post is about.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#136

Post by kimos »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #116

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.

This works on any iPhone? It mounts the non-privileged DCIM folder or whatever over USB to somewhere on your filesystem? With write access?

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#137

Post by reconnecting »

einsteinx2 wrote: post #126
reconnecting wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> or allowing you to download iCloud Photos in the native Photos application on Mac Here’s the official documentation page for exporting directly using Photos for Mac without syncing everything locally: https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/download-photos-to-yo... You can also choose to sync all photos locally with Photos for Mac by setting “Download Originals to this Mac” as described on this page which is what I…

Thank you.

That's exactly what I expected to work, but for some reason this approach failed for me on a new Mac with an empty Photos library. I enabled "Download Originals," but 10+ years of iCloud photos never appeared. There's no manual "fetch all from iCloud" button, no progress indicator, no way to diagnose what's wrong - the sync just silently fails. Luckily, iCloud Photos Downloader bypasses Photos entirely and pulls directly from iCloud.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#138

Post by coder543 »

reconnecting wrote: post #135
coder543 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're arguing with a lot of people who have personally seen this work. You can listen to other people. You can also go to an Apple Store and let them show you what's going wrong here.

Perhaps no one here has tried to download an entire iCloud library at once, or perhaps size is an issue, but that doesn't change the fact that there is no download button for iCloud Photos and iCloud Photos Downloader simply solves this. That's what this post is about.

iCloud Photos Downloader is an option, yes, but it is incorrect to say that Apple does not provide an official way to do this on Mac. Again, I direct you to the Apple Store so someone can show you in person, since you won't listen to anyone on here.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#139

Post by nik_0_0 »

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?

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#140

Post by crossroadsguy »

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)

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