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

221–230 of 257 posts

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#221

Post by jasonkester »

jasonkester wrote: post #181

I was there until I saw this feature: Automatic de-duplication of photos with the same name I recently went through a year’s worth of photos from my wife’s phone, and found three distinct “img_0001.jpg”’s just in that single year. Apple’s naming convention is so short sighted that I’d be terrified letting a piece of software try to dedupe it “by name “

Replying to myself to tell me that I'm wrong.

I'm running this on my icloud photos now, and it seems to be dropping them nicely into folders by year and month:

D:\Pictures\icpd\2026\01\01

... so my wife will need to step up her game and start taking 10,000 photos a month before I run afoul of this.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#222

Post by marscopter »

reconnecting wrote: post #104
nemothekid wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you are on PC. But on Mac with the Photos App Cmd+A > File > Export Unmodified Originals

There is no straight way to download photos from iCloud to Mac.

Photos > Settings > iCloud > Download Originals to this Mac.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#223

Post by zerkten »

kccqzy wrote: post #215
open_ wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

It's right to question this. I had taken https://www.photosync-app.com/support/basics/answers/does-ph... ("PhotoSync transfers the original, unaltered images including all EXIF and GPS data") on face value without thinking of all of the iCloud behavior. Even limited copies would suffice in my case, but that's insufficient for others.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#224

Post by blindriver »

Is there no worry in giving the app your password? I would never just give my password, especially my Apple account password to a random app. Is this program reliable? However it looks like a program that I want to use.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#225

Post by bicepjai »

tentacleuno wrote: post #208
bicepjai wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Like Memories feature in Apple which uses media to make short form video but also picks and plays music with them. We love those videos. Enabling feature like that involves understanding metadata and media and music.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#226

Post by darknavi »

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.

With Photosync I have our photos export to my NAS and have it update the file names with the timestamp + original file name, which makes it so much more sane to sort through.

Example:

Original: IMG_9999.JPG

Server-side file: 2015.01.15__IMG_9999__.JPG

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#227

Post by jaffa2 »

rgovostes wrote: post #35

My concern with backing up iCloud Photos with anything but Apple Photos is that there are some proprietary formats like Live Photos and slow mo video for which exports are lossy. Also, Apple Photos stores all edits non-destructively, so 'flattening' the edits into a single file for export is also a lossy operation. It seems like an obvious improvement for Time Machine to support full backups while using optimized sto…

This. I don't understand why Apple don't have another checkbox beside the Download Originals to this Mac that reads 'Store Backup of Original Photos on Timemachine' This is all that's needed to solve the issue. I actually bought a Mac Studio, and a USB disk, just to be able to download originals of my photos for local backup, since a MBP is effetively a mobil limited device just like an iphone.

"I actually bought a Mac Studio"... "I don't understand why Apple don't " ... wait a minute

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#228

Post by jaffa2 »

nathancahill wrote: post #154
rykc wrote: post #142

Wish I’d seen this 3 days ago. Needed to backup our Shared Library and did the following (about 10K photos/videos at 300gb, had enough space so full downloaded to MacBook, not optimize. 1. Repair iPhoto library, (Wait 24 hrs to re-sync to iCloud) - initially looks like it moved all photos to personal. 2. Select small chunks, by year worked well enough - selecting All gave me the spinning ball. Then export unmodified…

Is there any difference in moving Photos Library.photoslibrary to an external HDD and then pointing Photos.app at that?

There's some technical reason (or non-reason) why Mac OS does not accept the System photolibrary on an external disk. It prevents certain things from happening which may or may not mater to you. Otherwise you can switch librarys by holding Option during photo bootup.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#230

Post by scoot »

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…

This looks interesting. Can I use it to back up photos from one (old) photo library, and restore them into another (newer) one?
Post reply on HN