Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

iCloud Photos Downloader

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 257 posts

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#171

Post by QuiEgo »

stavros wrote: post #120
bicepjai wrote: post #117

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 prac…

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).

Encryption at rest. If someone breaks into my house and steals my server I'd rather they not be able to get data. I can do LUKS but I really want the data to only ever be decrypted client side.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#172

Post by nik_0_0 »

mrexroad wrote: post #85
rgovostes wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a 1.2T photo library. Carrying that around on my MacBook requires an $800 upgrade to the SSD. Time Machine's job is to back up my data, it's not strictly to make a 1:1 copy of local storage. It should back up my cloud data too.

My library is large too (roughly a third larger). After years of far more complicated storage/backup solutions, I settled w/ a second Photos library on an external hdd w/ optimize storage disabled. I plug the drive in and open this library every so often to update and then duplicate the drive for an off-site copy. Day to day, I use a Photos library on my primary drive with optimize storage enabled. I’ve found unreaso…

I had tried this but found it a little bit weird - switching back and forth on the same device between the 'hard drive w/ full files' library and the 'primary drive optimize storage' didn't really seem easy.

IIRC Photos.app will not even open if the default library you are pointing at is not there (i.e drive was unplugged). Are you able to just open up the library file directly and it will work as expected?

I also recall when changing Photos.app back to the HDD Library it did a ~2h 'rebuild' session before it even started downloading the new photos, but maybe thats acceptable with the 'every so often' approach.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#173

Post by CamperBob2 »

CSDude wrote: post #19

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?

All my vertical videos in iCloud show up cropped horizontal for some reason.

Turn your phone? /ducks

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#175

Post by s4mbh4 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #148
gerdemb wrote: post #141

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…

I have taken time to slowly extract photos from old androids and its such a nightmare, and if you cant get a meaningful interface to load you have to resort to tooling that scrapes the whole drive and hope it grabs everything.

My current workflow for this is to install the 'simpleSSHD' app on the android phone and rsync the files off at full network speed.

The sshd running on the phone also supports key based auth , so it's pretty simple to automate.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#176

Post by lostlogin »

reconnecting wrote: post #105
mr_toad wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two options in the file menu - you can export the originals, and there is an option to export them as .jpg.

From iPhotos (Photos) app to hard drive. Subject is to download photos from iCloud.

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/ma...

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#177

Post by lostlogin »

reconnecting wrote: post #106
lostlogin wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#178

Post by yardstick »

m463 wrote: post #168
open_ wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My current process for offloading photos off the iPhone is to copy them in subsequent batches of '0-9999' from the 'Image Capture' app. This is because I usually have far more than 10K photos and apple starts renaming the files after 9999 as 00001(1) for the rest. This is pretty undesirable. Is there a way for me to export unmodified raw/jpeg/live/videos off the iphone to an external drive without a macbook with a la…

I use libimobiledevice on linux plug iphone into usb. lsusb should show it. I backup my photos with: sudo ifuse -o allow_other /mnt rsync -a /mnt/DCIM sudo umount /mnt Actually, I backup all of /mnt not just DCIM, but that answer is for you. I also backup the entire phone with: sudo idevicebackup2 backup but in this form it either does the photos as data files, or doesn't back them up. I think it is a complete backup…

Do you take into account the iPhone not holding the original images of every photo? It will offload originals and just keep thumbnails if the library is too large.

Mine is approaching 1.5TB, I’ve got no hope of keeping that all on an iPhone, and also no guarantee that any given photo is fully available locally.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#180

Post by reconnecting »

mingus88 wrote: post #163
reconnecting wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let me be one more voice telling you that you are wrong. I just did this morning. In settings, "download originals to this mac", select all photos, file -> "export unmodified originals" will trigger the Photos app to download every file from iCloud into your local library (as well as exporting them to wherever you want) I guess "there is no download button" but dude...I don't need iCloud Photos Downloader.

Thanks for letting me know. May I ask what macOS version you use?

Unfortunately, I'm unable to locate any button, status bar, or option to refresh or pull everything from iCloud in macOS Photos. There aren't even any details showing what percentage of iCloud is currently synchronized with macOS Photos. With nothing to debug, I can only conclude that for some reason the sync isn't working in my case.

It's great if this works for you and you don't need iCloud Photos Downloader, but for some reason I don't have that luxury.

Post reply on HN