iCloud Photos Downloader • Hacker News Board

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#251

Post by ubermonkey » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

gerdemb wrote: post #250

ubermonkey wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes — that’s exactly what Photos Backup Anywhere is designed to do. The app creates file-system-level backups of each individual photo and video from your Photos library. Every asset is exported as a real file on disk (HEIC, JPEG, MOV, etc.), not a database blob or package, so you can browse, copy, verify, and back them up with standard tools. In addition, the app keeps a small SQLite database alongside the files to…

That's awesome. I've been low-key looking for something like this, so I just bought your tool. Thanks for creating it!

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#252

Post by WhyNotHugo » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

kimos wrote: post #136

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #116

I’ve been using usbmuxd+ifuse to copy the photo files straight from the phone. No need to wait for an upload/download to some remote server, just a direct cable from the phone to my computer. I get the original files, and can even move (instead of copy) to clear up the phone.

This works on any iPhone? It mounts the non-privileged DCIM folder or whatever over USB to somewhere on your filesystem? With write access?

Yes, yes, and yes.

https://whynothugo.nl/journal/2024/12/22/exporting-photos-fr...

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#253

Post by darkteflon » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 10:29 PM UTC

gerdemb wrote: post #247

darkteflon wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great app! Thanks, I bought it. I'm backing up to a network share over SMB. Just wanted to let you know that the error message in the event that the share becomes unmounted during a backup is a bit obscure: it just says "pdb.sqlite" doesn't exist. Stopping and restarting the backup fixes it. Might be helpful to provide some clearer error handling / messaging and guidance for disappearing network shares?

Thanks or the detailed feedback. You’re right about that error message. What’s happening is that when the SMB share gets unmounted, the app can no longer access its SQLite database (pba.sqlite), and the resulting error isn’t very user-friendly. I agree it would be much clearer to explicitly detect a missing or unmounted network share and provide guidance. I’ve added this to my list of things to improve. Thanks again…

My pleasure - much appreciated and thanks for being so responsive.

I’ll just add in here a sneaky humble request for graceful automatic pausing and restarting as network shares (or other volumes?) (dis-)appear - although I imagine that one’s a bit trickier to implement.

All the best! Very satisfied user. Great replacement for the script + cron job I was using before.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#254

Post by hackeman300 » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 3:40 AM UTC

gerdemb wrote: post #246

hackeman300 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes — in Apple Photos the manually edited date/time is not written back into the image or video file. It’s stored separately in the Photos library database, which is why tools like Immich usually fall back to the original capture date in EXIF / QuickTime metadata. Photos Backup Anywhere does handle this case: it reads the adjusted date from the Photos library and stores that modified timestamp in its own SQLite datab…

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it. Does Apple provide any APIs for interacting with this metadata or was this something you had to implement yourself with lower level DB lookups?

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#255

Post by wappieslurkz » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 1:58 AM UTC

klausa wrote: post #219

wappieslurkz wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Aha, thanks. That's good to know.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#256

Post by wappieslurkz » Sun, Jan 18, 2026, 2:00 AM UTC

BeastMachine wrote: post #234

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?

Pretty severe -- ADP allows users to store data with e2e encryption. Disabling ADP is a pretty serious* thing to do -- and pretty disappointing since I was interested in the product. Since it's OSS though this might be something that can be worked around in the future.

Thanks for confirming my hunch. I'd be surprised if it would be possible to work around this.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#257

Post by scoot » Mon, Jan 19, 2026, 11:50 AM UTC

gerdemb wrote: post #249

scoot wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes — that’s exactly what it’s designed for. You can back up photos from one Photos library and later restore them into a different Photos library. The restore process recreates the items in the target library using the data stored in the backup.

Thanks. I'll give it a go