Need help downloading files off iCloud to a hard drive
I need to sit down with someone and have help taking my photos off iCloud to a external hard drive
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.4
Question marked as
Photos can’t be transferred directly from iCloud to an external hard drive for that you need to set up iCloud photo library see the article Set up and use iCloud Photos - Apple
And its preferences Change preferences in Photos on Mac - Apple open finder > Go > home > your user name > pictures either drag and drop PhotosLibrary.photoslibrary to an external hard drive , the second method is right click on PhotosLibrary.photoslibrary and click on show package contents in the upcoming column , you can also drag and drop complete “ originals “ folder ( for Mac OS Catalina 10.15.7 ) to an external hard drive that is connected .
Also as per the article Back up the library in Photos on Mac - Apple
Manually copy your library to an external storage device: Drag the Photos library (by default in the Pictures folder on your Mac) to your storage device to create a copy.See this article also
Photos library - Move your Library to an external storage device