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iCloud Photos Downloader

github.com

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Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#61

Post by rgovostes »

fn-mote wrote: post #48
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…

How about just turning off optimized storage and letting Time Machine do its job?

I have a 1.2T photo library. Carrying that around on my MacBook requires an $800 upgrade to the SSD.

Time Machine's job is to back up my data, it's not strictly to make a 1:1 copy of local storage. It should back up my cloud data too.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#62

Post by [deleted] »

hannob wrote: post #50

You need an extra tool to download your own photos? That's... not a basic feature? I'm always surprised what kind of antifeatures people in Apple land are willing to accept and still use those things...

[deleted]

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#63

Post by reconnecting »

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…

Someone gave me a new iPhone (120GB) and a new MacBook Pro and asked me to download all their photos from iCloud. Long story short, after 120GB of photos were synchronised to the iPhone, the MacBook Pro refused to copy them, and now there's no storage left on the iPhone.

Also, Photos on Mac doesn't have an option to download photos directly, so the only valid option Apple offers is to download them through the web interface (max 1,000 at a time).

There is no official way to download iCloud library that is over phone capacity. Period.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#64

Post by varenc »

lostlogin wrote: post #38
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…

Could the first obvious improvement please be its speed? My god. The local Time Machine backup is slower on a 10gb network than Backblaze over the Internet. It isn’t even close.

I backup ~3-4GB a day with Time Machine to my local NAS and it takes less 10 minutes. Albeit it should take 30 seconds if it was maxing out the network speed.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#67

Post by porjo »

I use this to sync my wife's photos to Immich and it works great, however the auth process is a bit of a pain (not the fault of icloudpd) and have to reauth every few months.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#68

Post by shireboy »

I was just thinking about this today. Apples lack of any 3rd party integration for things like this and iMessage is really annoying sometimes. In addition to a secondary backup, I’d love to automatically sync some photos from a certain album to my parents photo frame. Or if I take a nice nature shot have it sync to a Samsung frame tv. I get the benefits of the walled garden but esp w photos and messaging it seems like opening up a little would allow for some innovation

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#69

Post by fizwidget »

reconnecting wrote: post #63
possiblerobot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+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…

Someone gave me a new iPhone (120GB) and a new MacBook Pro and asked me to download all their photos from iCloud. Long story short, after 120GB of photos were synchronised to the iPhone, the MacBook Pro refused to copy them, and now there's no storage left on the iPhone. Also, Photos on Mac doesn't have an option to download photos directly, so the only valid option Apple offers is to download them through the web in…

That doesn’t sound right. My photo library is larger than my iPhone’s storage yet downloads fine on my Mac. Just need to make sure “optimise storage” is enabled on the iPhone and disabled on the Mac.

Once everything’s downloaded on the Mac, you can either export through the Apple Photos menu or just copy the “originals” directly from the Photos bundle.

Re: iCloud Photos Downloader

#70

Post by rgovostes »

lostlogin wrote: post #38
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…

Could the first obvious improvement please be its speed? My god. The local Time Machine backup is slower on a 10gb network than Backblaze over the Internet. It isn’t even close.

I reinstalled my system and attempted for weeks to get Time Machine to complete a first backup. Every time I started it, the progress bar would fill up about 60% and then stall, and eventually kernel panic if the system was left idle for hours. Never happened before I reinstalled, though I have had it randomly decide the backup is corrupt and it has to start over. macOS deserves a better first-party backup feature.
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