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Download all my 3500 photos and videos originals from iCloud to my Mac

Hi everybody! I would like to download all my photos and videos originals from iCloud to my Mac but i cannot download all 3500 photos at once. The system says that i cannot select more than 1000 pieces and i can't select by hand more than 1 page of photos. Any advices? Thanks in advance.

iMac Pro

Posted on Apr 19, 2020 5:23 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Apr 19, 2020 5:51 AM

On a mac the easiest way to download all photos from iCloud would be to use the Photos.app on the mac, even if you do not want to use the Photos.app to manage your photos.

  • Create a new, empty Photos Library.
  • Make this library your system photos library in the Photos > Preferences > General: use as System Photo Library. The library is already the System Photo Library, if "Use as System Photo Library" is greyed out.
  • Enable iCloud Photos for this library in Photos > Preferences > iCloud. Do not enable "optimise Storage".
  • Then wait for the photos to download from iCloud to this library.

Now you can use "File > Export > Export unmodified original" to export all photos to a folder on your mac and save them.


3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 19, 2020 5:51 AM in response to totodarch

On a mac the easiest way to download all photos from iCloud would be to use the Photos.app on the mac, even if you do not want to use the Photos.app to manage your photos.

  • Create a new, empty Photos Library.
  • Make this library your system photos library in the Photos > Preferences > General: use as System Photo Library. The library is already the System Photo Library, if "Use as System Photo Library" is greyed out.
  • Enable iCloud Photos for this library in Photos > Preferences > iCloud. Do not enable "optimise Storage".
  • Then wait for the photos to download from iCloud to this library.

Now you can use "File > Export > Export unmodified original" to export all photos to a folder on your mac and save them.


Download all my 3500 photos and videos originals from iCloud to my Mac

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