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iCloud Photos Downloader

github.com

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Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#211

Post by gerdemb »

wappieslurkz wrote: post #201
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?

That’s a good question. To be completely honest, I don’t know much about Advanced Data Protection myself, and I didn’t do anything specific in the app to detect or interact with it.

I’m actually curious: how did you discover that it doesn’t work when Advanced Data Protection is enabled? Was it through an error message, incomplete backups, or something else you noticed?

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#212

Post by lkmill »

nik_0_0 wrote: post #139

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 wit…

immich (self hosted photos app, https://immich.app/) "stacks" live photos with their videos

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#213

Post by nottorp »

possiblerobot wrote: post #18
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.

+1 to this method. After optimise storage is disabled on the Mac, wait for all photos to download. Then, open the photos library bundle and you'll see every photo there, full res. Copy them wherever you like. Also, if you leave optimise storage disabled and continue to use Photos, every photo will be cloned in any local or cloud backups of your machine. This strategy creates additional photo redundancy separate from…

I once exported my photos out of the iwhatever library. They weren't in the cloud, Apple hadn't managed to trick me into turning that on.

What I remember is that I opened the library in finder and in mc, got scared by the readable-only-by-machine directory structure and used a 3rd party tool to export them to date labeled directories.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#214

Post by [deleted] »

zerkten wrote: post #156
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…

Does the PhotoSync app permit that? I use it to copy files to my NAS but it has some USB-related options I never explored. I used to use Image Capture but heard of PhotoSync and have never looked back.

[deleted]

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#215

Post by kccqzy »

open_ wrote: post #169
zerkten wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the PhotoSync app permit that? I use it to copy files to my NAS but it has some USB-related options I never explored. I used to use Image Capture but heard of PhotoSync and have never looked back.

That looks like it might do the trick. I feel like this should be something possible only using first party apps but I'll take it! Thanks.

I use and like PhotoSync but I thought it doesn’t export unmodified originals but your edited versions. Personally I like this behavior better but that might not be what you want?

I’m not sure Apple allows any third party app to access the unmodified originals. Imagine you crop a photo to remove some embarrassing part. A third-party app can just recover that? What a privacy risk.

Of course this won’t matter if you don’t do any photo editing on iOS.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#216

Post by wappieslurkz »

gerdemb wrote: post #211
wappieslurkz wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That’s a good question. To be completely honest, I don’t know much about Advanced Data Protection myself, and I didn’t do anything specific in the app to detect or interact with it. I’m actually curious: how did you discover that it doesn’t work when Advanced Data Protection is enabled? Was it through an error message, incomplete backups, or something else you noticed?

I did not discover it, disabling ADP is listed under "iCloud Prerequisites" on the/your GitHub page.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#217

Post by hackeman300 »

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…

If you manually edit the date on a photo, is that also stored separately from the image file itself? Wondering because I've noticed photos I've backed up to Immich from iOS photos don't respect that edited date and reflect whatever the original date was.

I've been thinking about looking into a fix for this since it's bugged me a bit.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#218

Post by torarnv »

gerdemb wrote: post #210
torarnv wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Excellent, thanks!

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#219

Post by klausa »

wappieslurkz wrote: post #216
gerdemb wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a good question. To be completely honest, I don’t know much about Advanced Data Protection myself, and I didn’t do anything specific in the app to detect or interact with it. I’m actually curious: how did you discover that it doesn’t work when Advanced Data Protection is enabled? Was it through an error message, incomplete backups, or something else you noticed?

I did not discover it, disabling ADP is listed under "iCloud Prerequisites" on the/your GitHub page.

The app that the person you're replying to ('gerdemb) created (Photos Backup Anywhere) is different than the open-source CLI tool that is the HN submission (icloud_photos_downloader).

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#220

Post by ubermonkey »

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'm extremely interested in any process that would allow me to create file-system-level backups of individual photos. Will your tool do that?
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