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iCloud Photos Downloader

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Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#201

Post by wappieslurkz »

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…

Thanks for creating this amazing tool. A requirement for it to work is disabling "Advanced Data Protection". What are the implications of doing this?

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#202

Post by nicbou »

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).

How much work is it to maintain an Immich instance? I'm trying to keep my digital setup lean, but I can't find a simple way to get photos off my iPhone and onto my home server. One way synchronization is my only goal. Extra features are not desired.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#203

Post by vachina »

tra3 wrote: post #5

Does anyone know if there’s a way to self host/impersonate iCloud? I’d like to back my iPhone up locally.

All the comment here fail to address the “view” part of iCloud.

I wrote a webapp to try to solve that for myself (https://github.com/yhling/go-web-image-gallery)

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#204

Post by stavros »

nicbou wrote: post #202
stavros wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

How much work is it to maintain an Immich instance? I'm trying to keep my digital setup lean, but I can't find a simple way to get photos off my iPhone and onto my home server. One way synchronization is my only goal. Extra features are not desired.

I change a line in the Dockerfile to upgrade it every few months, that's it. Otherwise it's zero.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#205

Post by thw_9a83c »

yardstick wrote: post #178
m463 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Do you take into account the iPhone not holding the original images of every photo?

If you have enough storage space on your iPhone, you can select "Download and Keep Originals" in the photo app settings.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#206

Post by torarnv »

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…

Awesome! Thanks for posting, I've been looking for exactly this kind of project that takes end to end pristine restoration seriously.

The FAQ states you back up the originals as plain images files in YYYY/MM/DD format, which is great for integration with other tools. What about metadata? Is it in a format that lends to integration with other tools, say if you stop developing/supporting your app for some reason?

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#207

Post by giancarlostoro »

s4mbh4 wrote: post #175
giancarlostoro wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah but for some phones the storage is full ;) I had to figure out how to remove just enough to root it and then just adb in for one phone then I learned that if I extract too quickly it gives up the ghost so I have to add a delay

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#208

Post by tentacleuno »

bicepjai wrote: post #123
stavros wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Music and AI features are still lagging in Immich, and I can understand why. Immich machine learning is not flushed out yet. If Immich has plans for creating marketplace for extensibility like plugins, in the current era of Claude code, I am sure we will end up with many options or features.

Music? Like a music library? Wouldn't Subsonic be miles better for that?

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#209

Post by xattt »

thw_9a83c wrote: post #200

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.

I’m in the midst of a backup-to-local project and, with this post to HN, I’m worried an Apple project manager will be on a mission this morning to get his team to cripple this software.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#210

Post by gerdemb »

torarnv wrote: post #206
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…

Awesome! Thanks for posting, I've been looking for exactly this kind of project that takes end to end pristine restoration seriously. The FAQ states you back up the originals as plain images files in YYYY/MM/DD format, which is great for integration with other tools. What about metadata? Is it in a format that lends to integration with other tools, say if you stop developing/supporting your app for some reason?

Metadata is stored in an SQLite database alongside the backed up files. The format is not documented, but should be self explanatory if you examine the schema.
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