icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_downloader on Hacker News

I have successfully used this about 2 years ago from a Synology to perform a one-time backup (download) of about 380GB of photos and videos from my iCloud account - https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by CountGeek · 2026-09-17 · in Backups Aren't Simple

icloudpd - https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do... for the rest of the migration I had to take it piece by piece, luckily my iPhone had enough storage, I got iCloud to download everything to my iPhone, then…

comment by budududuroiu · 2026-01-26 · in Apple, What Have You Done?

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iCloud Photos Downloader

story by reconnecting · 2026-01-11 · 248 comments

This is great timing, I'm just setting up a homelab and planning to run Immich on a mini PC server connected to a NAS. I did find icloudpd, which seems like a pretty reliable syncing tool for people in Apple ecosystem.…

comment by prh8 · 2025-12-06 · in Self-hosting my photos with Immich

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iCloud-photos-downloader: A command-line tool to download photos from iCloud

story by danso · 2025-10-02 · 0 comments

> Not sure how well it works for iCloud. iCloud Photos stores originals (assuming you're using "Download Originals to this Mac") in the "originals" folder of your .photoslibrary package. If you don't sync your originals, use iCloud Photos…

comment by CharlesW · 2025-09-23 · in Android users can now use conversational editing in Google Photos

rclone has support for iCloud Drive, but it sounds like you are talking about iCloud Photos, which is a different service. This project lets you download from the latter: https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by RockRobotRock · 2025-06-26 · in I built an app to backup Live Photos from iPhone to external hard drives

I do that, and I'm also planning to use icloud photos downloader [0], a python script to download photos, so I can download those directly on another machine running Linux. [0] https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by weikju · 2025-04-22 · in Thieves took their iPhones. Apple won't give their digital lives back

I use icloudpd https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do... No uploading new photos, though.

comment by simbas · 2025-02-10 · in Apple's Best Option: Decentralize iCloud

Have you seen this? https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by maCDzP · 2024-12-15 · in They see your photos

As someone who has been on and off the Degoogle train (I ran full LineageOS without Google Play at one point) and is now pretty deep in iOS territory, I'd say the main thing for me has been email. I've used https://www.fastmail.com for a…

comment by spondyl · 2024-11-11 · in Apple courier may have stolen 2 MacBooks, ... Apple is not going to help

This might assist you in syncing this data and then either storing locally or pushing elsewhere for backups: https://github.com/steilerDev/icloud-photos-sync https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by toomuchtodo · 2024-07-31 · in macOS in QEMU in Docker

I like this one for syncing from iCloud Photos on my NAS: https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by leipert · 2024-06-11 · in Ask HN: What macOS apps/programs do you use daily and recommend?

Or use iCloud Photos Downloader once in a while: https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by mmcnl · 2024-04-27 · in Apple users are being locked out of their Apple IDs with no explanation

Take a look at icloudpd. I’ve been running it as a container for couple of years now and it’s been sync’ing photos down from my iphone to my NAS. https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by nirav72 · 2024-03-21 · in U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do... works great for me to do this.

comment by jcurbo · 2024-03-21 · in U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly

If it's a one time thing you can download all your photos in one shot via the privacy takeout tool. https://privacy.apple.com/ If you want an ongoing backup locally you have a couple options. On Windows you can use iCloud Photos on your PC…

comment by fckgw · 2024-02-13 · in Ask HN: Photos Backup Recommendation

I've been using icloudpd to get photos off of icloud. It took a while the first time but after that I set it up to only download the latest 500 photos (total number downloaded is usually way under) and run it every few months.…

comment by GloriousKoji · 2024-01-09 · in Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album

> They don't offer an appropriate API to get photos out. There's this: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/photokit ("The framework provides access to photos on the person’s device and in iCloud.") If you want to use undocumented…

comment by CharlesW · 2024-01-09 · in Building an e-ink picture frame that displays an iCloud photo album

AFAIK, it doesn’t support shared iCloud libraries but https://github.com/steilerDev/icloud-photos-sync does. Edit: Seems like it has gotten support since I’ve last looked: https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by leipert · 2024-01-05 · in Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

Disclaimer I haven't tried this yet, but I found this project recently that supposedly downloads all iCloud photos (e.g. to a NAS for local backup). https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by acheron · 2024-01-05 · in Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

>> There is not an easy, straight-forward way to download your archive from iCloud. Let me revolutionize your life: https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by mmh0000 · 2024-01-05 · in Cleaning up my 200GB iCloud with some JavaScript

If you have iCloud, you can use icloud.com to get some or all your photos in a zip. Or you can use scripts like this one : https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by pjerem · 2023-08-25 · in LANDrop – Drop any files to any devices on your LAN

I use https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do... running on my NAS to regularly download photos from my wife's iCloud account. The photos are stored in full resolution on iCloud with the EXIF data, unlike Google…

comment by venusenvy47 · 2023-07-11 · in Self-hosted photo and video backups directly from your mobile phone

If you use icloud, you can backup all your icloud photos locally. Checkout icloud_photos_downloader[1], they have a docker container that is drop-dead simple to use. I run this[3] about once a month, I could probably automate it, but that…

comment by mmh0000 · 2023-05-12 · in Things You Can Do with KDE Connect on Linux

To avoid future data lose, you can backup all your icloud photos locally. Checkout icloud_photos_downloader[1], they have a docker container that is drop-dead simple to use. I run this[3] about once a month, I could probably automate it,…

comment by mmh0000 · 2023-04-19 · in The iPhone Setting Thieves Use to Lock You Out of Your Apple Account

I have recently switched to a M1 Mac Mini, and just have each family member sign in to that using Remote Desktop. It brings the added bonus of working as a content cache for anything iCloud. My only gripe is that it downloads the shared…

comment by 8fingerlouie · 2023-03-16 · in Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by toomuchtodo · 2023-03-16 · in Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

i have been using icloudpd for years. there is a docker image that makes it simple to install on my synology. because of 2fa, i have to re-authenticate it from the terminal every couple of months, but that takes one minute.…

comment by gwkoehler · 2023-03-16 · in Is something wrong with Amazon Photos? I lost 240k photos

I found a tool to do just that, iCloud Photo Downloader[1] (tho you do need to have your photos backed up to iCloud). I run it as a cron on my NAS, and the only intereaction I need to have with it is to give it a new 2FA code every ~2-3…

comment by nowahe · 2023-01-17 · in How my brother's iCloud account was stolen

Here's how I do it... - subscribe to iCloud 2TB plan - all photos on my wife and my devices are auto uploaded to the cloud - i run a synology nas that downloads and organizes all the photos in a directory structure YYYY/MM/DD. - a…

comment by jasonwaters · 2022-01-20 · in Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

I researched this a little yesterday. I am using a Synology NAS and their Photos App allows to easily sync new pictures. It also allows syncing to cloud storage like B2 or glacier. I don’t want to download the old photos that are just on…

comment by leipert · 2022-01-18 · in Ask HN: What is your system for backing up family photos and video?

icloud-photo-downloader: https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do... I've used this to great success! As far as I could tell, it grabbed every photo and video at the highest quality. Very happy.

comment by rolobio · 2021-07-30 · in How I store my files

I've been using icloud-photos-downloader[0] for a while now, running as a Scheduled Task on my Synology. It supports 2FA as well, I just have to re-auth every 3-4 months. [0] : https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by nowahe · 2021-06-01 · in Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Photos?

You can probably use icloudpd [1] to consolidate that on just a Linux machine, as I'm (more or less) doing now. I'm saying more or less because we ran out of iCloud space, I still don't want to delte forever old photos from iCloud but I…

comment by darkwater · 2021-05-14 · in Open Source Continuous File Synchronization

I run this docker container on my Synology to have it download a backup of my iCloud Photo Library https://registry.hub.docker.com/r/icloudpd/icloudpd/ https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by kalleboo · 2021-03-06 · in Apple now lets you transfer your iCloud Photos to Google Photos

If you want to get your photos out of iCloud but not using Photos, there’s a neat cross-platform Python CLI tool called icloudpd[0]. It uses iCloud API, supports 2FA, and has a variety of options to control what’s downloaded (e.g., by…

comment by goblin89 · 2021-03-04 · in Apple now lets you transfer your iCloud Photos to Google Photos

in the meantime, https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do... has been pretty reliable for me.

comment by intpx · 2021-03-04 · in Apple now lets you transfer your iCloud Photos to Google Photos

Not sure about the upload part, but for getting photos out of iCloud, this works: https://github.com/icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_do...

comment by glial · 2020-12-31 · in LibrePhotos: A Self-Hosted Google Photos Alternative

…via iClouds (I guess I prefer that to google, and I can script it rather than do it via the web). https://github.com/ndbroadbent/icloud_photos_downloader

comment by WhyNotHugo · 2020-03-13 · in Self-hosted, super simple photo stream

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Show HN: A command-line tool to backup all of your iCloud photos

story by nathan_f77 · 2017-03-24 · 0 comments

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I built a command-line tool to download and sync all of your photos from iCloud

story by nathan_f77 · 2016-05-14 · 0 comments