iCloud Photos Downloader

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Whether Apple already supports full iCloud Photos download

  • Strong disagreement in the thread about the claim “there is no official way.”
  • Several users insist macOS Photos with “Download Originals to this Mac” enabled will sync the entire iCloud library (including old photos) to a Mac with enough disk space, after which “Export Unmodified Originals” or copying the “Originals” folder in the library bundle yields a full offline copy.
  • One user repeatedly reports this does not happen on a fresh Mac with an empty library; later discovers Photos sync was silently disabled “due to performance,” with the status message hidden behind an extra pull gesture in Monterey. After fixing that, they confirm full sync works and retract earlier claims.
  • iCloud web download is cited as limited (e.g., ~1,000 items per batch).
  • privacy.apple.com provides multi‑GB ZIP archives and/or transfer to Google Photos; works globally, but is slow, chunked, and awkward for staged offload. Does not work with Advanced Data Protection (ADP).

Why people use icloud_photos_downloader

  • Enables scripted, repeatable, CLI-based backups (often via Docker) to local storage/NAS, sometimes nightly.
  • Bypasses Photos.app UI issues, crashes, and hidden sync failures.
  • Produces a clean date-based folder structure and avoids needing enough local space for a full Photos library.
  • Used to feed self-hosted systems (Immich, NAS, etc.) or as a second backup independent of Apple.

Other tools and workflows

  • Mac-centric: Photos Export, osxphotos, Photos Backup Anywhere, Parachute Backup, darwin-photos.
  • Device-level: libimobiledevice/ifuse/usbmuxd or Image Capture to pull from DCIM directly; some use iTunes/Finder backups + backup extractors.
  • Self-hosted photo clouds: Immich, Synology Photos, ente, PhotoSync + NAS, often combined with 3‑2‑1 backup strategies.
  • Many mention partial strategies: keep a rolling few years in iCloud, archive older material locally.

Pain points and lock‑in concerns

  • Perception that Apple makes large-scale export intentionally hard; settings like “Optimize Storage” vs “Download and Keep Originals” are hard to find and poorly surfaced.
  • Complaints about Photos and iCloud bugs, sync stalls, CPU use, repeated logins, and Time Machine unreliability or slowness.
  • Concerns about loss of metadata, Live Photos/slow‑mo semantics, edited dates, and non‑destructive edits when exporting outside Photos.
  • Advanced Data Protection breaks many third‑party or unofficial downloaders.

Security and project status

  • Users worry about passing raw iCloud credentials into unpinned Docker images and unvetted tools.
  • The project is looking for a new maintainer; some fear Apple could deliberately break such tools, given its subscription incentives.