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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

#171

Post by eunice »

briffle wrote: post #151
Dalewyn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

You still need to manage backups. You’re trusting everything to the vendor. I run a docker image weekly that pulls my google photos, copies to my USB drive in my pi, and also copies to backblaze b2.

got a link for this image?

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#172

Post by eunice »

369548684892826 wrote: post #61
sgt wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been getting the same warning emails (200GB in my case). So I tried this now, but it doesn't seem to highlight anything after pasting in the gist into Chrome. Does it work for you?

If you have a Windows machine lying around, the iCloud app lets you download all your media out of iCloud Photos. Once it's all on Windows it's a lot easier to find the largest files!

the windows icloud app doesn't download the highest quality versions of each file though right?

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#173

Post by kalleboo »

Aeolun wrote: post #169
icebergonfire wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sepa…

> it's clearly not prioritized because it helps funnel people into higher iCloud tier Which would be annoying by itself. But then iCloud has an arbitrary limit of 2TB as well, which does not seem to be able to be increased.

The 2 TB limit (that I've been bumping up against for nearly 2 years) has finally been raised - a few months ago they added 6 TB and 12 TB tiers

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#174

Post by wideroots »

InsomniacL wrote: post #25

I'm pretty sure that iCloud stores the full version and downloads a lower quality optimised version to your phone. If you open iPhone settings and browse to: > Apple ID > iCloud > Photos There is an option to 'Optimise iPhone Storage' which is enabled by default. This states: > If your phone is low on space, full resolution photos and videos are automatically replaced with smaller device sized versions. Full-Resoluti…

This doesn't explain the case when the author uploaded and downloaded a new file, and there was no big diff in file size. The file size diff only seems to be happening to the author's older video files.

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#175

Post by wideroots »

sccxy wrote: post #37

iCloud backup is real mess. Free 5GB is not enough for backing up iPhone system data any more. Most insane is that if you remove some apps from backup, then it iCloud usage goes from 4.5GB to 4.6GB.

and you're basically given to choose either stop backing up your iMessage or pay $1/mo for the extra 50gb

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#176

Post by alexwlchan »

asdaq1312512 wrote: post #157
alexwlchan wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that all "photos" or "videos" are just a view of the underlying "photo or video object". If you crop a video, the full-size video will remain. Only if you export the video, it will be cropped and the smaller file size will manifest. Yup, the Photos app keeps the unmodified original file, and then any edits/crops are stored separately. You can always revert to the original file and redo your edits. So they m…

Ahh, I did consider PHAsset.fetchAssets but my understanding was that the method will download the file if not present locally - which wouldn't be acceptable for an app, I guess. Do you know more? The introduction says "Retrieve asset metadata or request full asset content.", but I can't find clarification when it actually accesses full content.

Yeah, that was what I thought when I first worked with these APIs! But when you use PhotoKit, you have to explicitly opt-in to downloading files from iCloud.

AFAICT, PHAsset is only metadata. When I'm downloading the full-sized images, I use PHImageManager.requestImage() and pass in the PHAsset I'm looking at [1][2]. I know there's something similar for video, but I've never used it.

You can control the behaviour by passing a PHImageRequestOptions instance. This includes an isNetworkAccessAllowed bool which controls where Photos.app will download the file from iCloud if not present locally, and it defaults to false.

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/photokit/loading_a...

[2]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/photokit/phimagema...

[3]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/photokit/phimagere...

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#177

Post by Aeolun »

kalleboo wrote: post #173
Aeolun wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's clearly not prioritized because it helps funnel people into higher iCloud tier Which would be annoying by itself. But then iCloud has an arbitrary limit of 2TB as well, which does not seem to be able to be increased.

The 2 TB limit (that I've been bumping up against for nearly 2 years) has finally been raised - a few months ago they added 6 TB and 12 TB tiers

Cool! I don’t see myself needing them any time soon, but max 2TB was too close for comfort.

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#178

Post by mmikeff »

The thing that is taking up loads of my iCloud storage is the 'live' video version of photos where the tiny snippet of movement has a larger filesize than the photo that it accompanies. The only way I have found so far to deal with this is to download the files locally, delete from iCloud, delete the local videos and upload the remaining still images. This is time consuming, clunky and makes me nervous that I'll delete something or lose something important in the process. Is there anything out the that help to automate that process but where there is some level of editorial control so that I can identify and keep the handful of 'live' images that I might actually want to keep?

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#179

Post by mmikeff »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #168
orenlindsey wrote: post #166

Interesting, also, Apple should make a mid-tier of iCloud. If they had a 500gb (or 400 or whatever) they could have gotten this guy to pay more.

At the cost of many others not buying the more expensive plan because it was their only option.

Surely there are plenty of us who would happily (or at least less reluctantly) pay incrementally more as our storage needs increase, but who baulk at trebling what we pay in one jump.

Re: Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

#180

Post by jnrk »

iscrewyou wrote: post #154
asdaq1312512 wrote: post #53

Photos.app doesn't show file size… so I thought, why not build a little Photos.app extension or a separate app that queries for large files? Turns out that the API doesn't expose "file size", at least I didn't find a straight-forward way. I think that all "photos" or "videos" are just a view of the underlying "photo or video object". If you crop a video, the full-size video will remain. Only if you export the video,…

You might know this already but the Photos catalog/photiolibrary is just a folder. You can actually right click and “show package contents”. From there, you can use something like Daisy Disk to display all the files based on their size. A simple drag and drop has worked for me. Once you find the large file, you can search for the name in the photos app. I’ve deleted some quite large videos this way to clear up some s…

This only works for files saved locally though. Doesn’t help with large files on the iCloud server.
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