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iCloud Photos Downloader

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Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#191

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…

You were absolutely right. Someone in the thread mentioned a status indicator, and it triggered me that I hadn't seen it at all.

It appears that on Monterey I need to pull the page down twice to show the sync status, and when I found it, the message said that photos weren't syncing due to "Performance."

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#192

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.

Thank you! The status message was indeed hidden on Monterey, and syncing was blocked due to "Performance."

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#193

Post by cleanexit0 »

This looks useful. I ran into a very similar problem recently and ended up building a small tool for my own use: https://github.com/cleanexit0/darwin-photos

It's macOS-only and intentionally minimal — the goal is just to download originals from iCloud Photos to disk without syncing everything into Photos.app first.

To be clear on limitations: it doesn't preserve albums or other metadata yet, and it's not meant to replace more full-featured tools. It’s mainly for the "I just want my photos off iCloud for backup" case.

Reading the comments here, it sounds like metadata preservation is a big pain point for many people — I'd be curious whether that's the first thing folks would want added, or if simple bulk export already covers most needs.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#194

Post by submeta »

pgalvin wrote: post #88
submeta wrote: post #82

I pay around 10 euros a month to apple just so I can sync my photos from iphone to mac and ipad. That’s the only reason I need the 2 TB for icloud service. With an app like this I could download and keep copies and get rid of iCloud subscription?

This will let you download all of your photos that already exist on iCloud Photos. Going forward, you’d want to set up some other way to sync photos you take from your phone to your other devices. I can personally recommend Synology Photos for simplicity[1], or Immich[2] for an open-source (and in my opinion, slightly better) alternative you can run on any hardware, if you’d like to set up an always-on NAS. These are…

Thank you very much for the detailed reply. I have a Synology NAS, will look into that solution.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#195

Post by Razengan »

It's fucking amazing sometimes how the Mac/iOS Photos app can't download a photo or small video for several minutes but you can easily watch YouTube on the same connection.

And it took Apple YEARS to give us a "Keep Downloaded" option for iCloud Drive documents in Finder.

And it's been years since I read any ebooks because the damn Mac/iOS Books app keeps removing my downloaded books even though I have several GBs of storage space left.

Goddamn Tim Cook and the other execs, do they even ever use their own products at all?

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#196

Post by mxfh »

reconnecting wrote: post #60
kccqzy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true. On any Mac or iPhone you can choose the iCloud Photo Library storage option to download all instead of letting the system optimize the storage. And if you turn off iCloud Photo Library, it will also try to download it all. I know this because I stopped using iCloud Photo Library and that was how I got all my photos downloaded.

Okay, and if there are 300 or 500 GB of photos, how do you synchronise them with your iPhone?

You can't run random cli-tools on your iOS phone either.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#197

Post by supermatt »

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…

Is the app bound to the purchasers iCloud, or can I also use it to download my partners images?

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#198

Post by thw_9a83c »

open_ wrote: post #147
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…

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…

> My current process for offloading photos off the iPhone

I'm not sure about Linux, but my workflow on Windows and MacOS is to frequently back up my iPhone locally (which you should do anyway because few incorrect PINs can security lock your phone [1]) and use utility like backup extractor (e.g. [2] but there are many others) to extract all photos from the backup. This effectively removes the need to use iCloud.

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/105090?device-type=iphone

[2]: https://github.com/joz-k/ios_backup_extractor

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#200

Post by thw_9a83c »

From the project describtion: "Looking for MAINTAINER for this project"

Honestly, Apple should officially maintain tools like this. However, for obvious reasons, such as the iCloud subscription revenue model, Apple will not do it. In fact, Apple may even make life harder for such tools.

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