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Comments (121)

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  bicepjai
  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 practical way I’ve found to back up multiple accounts into one place, though it does require occasional re-auth every so often. - I keep only the last ~2 years of media in iCloud and delete older ones after they’re archived locally. - For browsing and searching the older archive, I use Immich, which has been a great self-hosted personal photo cloud experience with a modern app feel.For storage, I’ve found fast local disk matters a lot once you’re digging up photos from 5+ years ago. Something like an OWC 4M2 with M.2 drives keeps the experience snappy; a typical HDD-based NAS can feel sluggish when you just want to quickly pull up an old memory.https://github.com/boredazfcuk/docker-icloudpd
• WhyNotHugo
  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.
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  ndegruchy
  While not free, and not for any other platform than macOS. The program Parachute[1] in the App Store is very nice in downloading both photos from your library as well as files from the various locations.[1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parachute-backup/id6748614170?...
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  reconnecting
  Surprisingly, there is no official way to download all (400 Gb) photos from iCloud. Here is an open-source command-line tool to download all your iCloud photos.
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  jeremymaluf
  Does anyone have any idea for why Apple makes it so difficult to keep photos downloaded?For context, try tapping 'optimize photos' in iPhone storage settings and then figure out how to turn off the feature without using Google. Not only is the toggle nearly impossible to find, but it's also hidden from being searchable
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  mmh0000
  I run this periodically from a little shell script; I "should" automate it, but time is scarce. ⟩ cat ~/bin/icloud_download #!/bin/bash mkdir "$(pwd)"/{photos,cookies} 2> /dev/null if [[ -z "${ICLOUD_USERNAME}" ]]; then echo "need env ICLOUD_USERNAME" exit 1 fi if [[ -z "${ICLOUD_PASSWORD}" ]]; then echo "need env ICLOUD_PASSWORD" exit 1 fi podman container run -it --rm --name icloud \ -v $(pwd)/photos:/data \ -v $(pwd)/cookies:/cookies \ -e TZ=America/Boise \ icloudpd/icloudpd:latest \ icloudpd --directory /data \ --cookie-directory /cookies \ --folder-structure {:%Y/%Y-%m-%d} \ --username "${ICLOUD_USERNAME}" \ --password "${ICLOUD_PASSWORD}" \ --size original
• 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
• qaid
  Is there an iCloud Photos uploader?I have a script to scan files from my camera and add a compressed copy to a folder. This folder was supposed to work with the iCloud for windows (10) program, but one day it just stopped working.
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  DHPersonal
  Parachute Backup is a tool I use: https://parachuteapps.com/parachute
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  jeanofthedead
  I'm a big fan of Parachute Backup for this purpose. https://parachuteapps.com/parachute
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  axpy906
  This great. I want to switch to android but the only thing stopping me is eight years of photos. No more.
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  rgovostes
  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 storage on the primary system.
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  CSDude
  All my vertical videos in iCloud show up cropped horizontal for some reason. If I go to edit I see the whole video. I really do not want to trust any cloud provider to maintain my years of archives of family photos and videos. Glad things like this exist. I just need properly date-foldered files, without no duplciates. Is that so hard?
• 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.
• Dachande663
  I’ve been using this for several years now on a little unraid box to download new photos nightly. There’s a few docker containers that wrap in support for notifying when 2FA is required etc. Always makes me nervous, the access it has, but I’d rather have my photos backed up somewhere I own.
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  tra3
  Does anyone know if there’s a way to self host/impersonate iCloud? I’d like to back my iPhone up locally.
• ccakes
  Seems to be looking for a new maintainer. If anyone has the bandwidth, it’s a great piece of software
• ericj5
  Wow, I will definitely give this a try. I have tens of thousands of photos in iCloud and I literally can’t export them all at once. Photos app chokes and crashes and manually babysitting smaller batches is a pain. It’s pretty clear they want to make it as hard as possible
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  punnerud
  You know you only need to do a GDPR request to Apple (dedicated page), select images and you get a download link after a few hours
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  submeta
  I pay around 10 euros a month to apple just so I can sync my photos from iphone to mac and ipad. That’s the only reason I need the 2 TB for icloud service. With an app like this I could download and keep copies and get rid of iCloud subscription?
• quietsegfault
  > Disable Advanced Data ProtectionNope, bzzzzt, wrong!
• 1love1heart
  There is something similar to Google Takeout for Apple Photos. Recently used it to download thousands of photos.
• rcarmo
  I created this over the holiday break to do mostly the same:https://github.com/rcarmo/PhotosExport...when you try to export files using the (restricted) APIs we get, it automatically triggers a download.
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  Razele
  why not use rclone
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  caminanteblanco
  I mean can't you go to privacy.apple.com, ask for an archive of your data, and then they'll email you the link to a zip file in a week or two? I'm pretty sure this is what my girlfriend did when she transitioned from an iPhone to a Pixel. I think there's even a specific checkbox for photos/videos
• jojohack
  Became more fascinated with the history of my small hometown (Paris, Texas) TLDR: Much of it was wiped out by a 1916 fire. I spent some time recently vibe-coding this interactive map to provide some kind of historic visualization ( which enabled me to see the impact better ) https://gorch.com/parisfiremap/
• SilverElfin
  Thanks. I cannot get iCloud sync to work at all. It consumes CPU, asks for logins repeatedly, etc but fails to actually do its job. When I think of its bugs and all the issues with the latest iOS (bugs and performance on recent hardware), I am thinking of exiting the Apple ecosystem entirely.
• nashashmi
  Vulnerability hijack incoming with the headline calling for another maintainer
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  hannob
  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...