How do you select multiple photos in iCloud?

Agree with the fed-up users on here : Extremely annoying that Apple would change the simple, common, fundamental functionality of being able to Shift-Click to select multiple photos from "All Photos". Especially since it was already there!! It's baffling as to why they would even take this out. Restore this immediately, please.

Took me a little while to figure this out through brute force of clicking on every option available. Since I pulled up your question while searching for a solution, and noticed that quite a few people had chimed in on your thread for a solution, I figured that I would reply to you in hopes that it would eventually reach the masses. Yes, it is possible to download all of your photos from iCloud using the App (I tried to find a way to do this via the iCloud website, and couldn't figure out a way) on a Mac/PC, but you will need to do a few things on your PC before going through the steps that I'll outline below (Sorry Mac Users, the process is similar, but I really don't want to pull out my MBP 101 to write up a how to). Install, configure and login to the iCloud app in Windows, and note where the "Downloads" folder is located on your PC so that you can navigate there later to manage the photos & videos after they are on your local hard drive. I suggest connecting your computer directly to your router via an Ethernet Cable to prevent any transmission errors that may be encountered when using WiFi to download your iCloud photos and videos. Now on to the steps:

1. Locate the System Tray located in the lower right corner of your display. If the iCloud icon isn't displayed, click the up arrow to expand the System Tray.
   
2. Click on the iCloud System Tray Icon to access the iCloud dialog box which will give you options to control the iCloud app and items associated with your account. Here you will find a section for iCloud Photos with a button to "Download Photos" that you need to click to download your photos.
   
3. The "Download Photos and Videos" dialog box should pop up. Click the appropriate Check Box next to specific years you would like to download. More than likely you are looking for the "All" entry to download all photos and videos.
   
4. Depending upon how many photos and or videos that are stored in your iCloud account, you may experience a long wait while downloading your items. The only download progress indicator that I could find was in the iCloud Dialog Box mentioned in Step 2 where it says "Downloading x,xxx Items".

Hope this helps! ^_____^

I agree Apple has made photos overly complicated. After iphoto, they introduced Photo, and, photos no longer drag and drop into iMovie. Next, they introduced iCloud for my phone, but, it is nearly impossible to get them to download to my Mac Photo. When I connect my iPhone to my Mac using a cable, it shows only 3 photos that I can import, when I have over 1,000. Simple case of "over-engineering" what was once a simple process.

I agreed what Leione said :

A logic question- WHY ?

The iCloud web interface is not meant to be the main access to download all your photos to your computer. It is a tool to browse your photos, if you cannot access your computer and to download a few photos if you cannot get access to your main Photos Library.

But the more convenient way to download your photos from your iPhone to a mac is to use the Photos.app on the mac. And if you are using a different brand of computer consider to use My Photo Stream to transfer new photos wirelessly.

Once you open photo app , take cursor on top menu bar , click on edit > again click on select All , so all photos will be selected .

Again clicked on image a pop - up window appears , clicked on delete photos as shown in the screen shot .

naillamine wrote:

Not Working !!!

To select multiple files or folders that are listed together, click the first item you want to select, hold down the Shift key, then click the last item.

It used to work a year ago beautifully, when alex_h1 posted the reply. The Photos page at www.icloud.com has been updated, and now the "Select" button in the toolbar is missing, and so we can no longer use the shift key to select a range of photos. It is either a bug or a dropped feature.

You may want to send feedback to Apple and request a bug fix: Apple - Photos - Feedback

Hello !

Ben ,

This thread is going from two years , and many of us are trying to solve , selecting all photos ( can be thousands or more ) than deleting them in one single stroke seems impractical , the Mac user can select photos in parts and delete .

Delete items from iCloud Photo Library

To delete an item from iCloud Photo Library, just delete it from your Photos library: while viewing the photos in a moment, select the item you want to delete and press Delete.

Deleted photos and videos aren’t immediately removed from your library; they’re placed in the Recently Deleted album, where they remain for the number of days shown, and then are deleted. You can remove the items immediately using the steps below. Once the items are removed permanently, they’re no longer available on any device that uses iCloud Photo Library.

1. To immediately delete photos from the Recently Deleted album, click Recently Deleted under Albums in the sidebar.
2. Select the items you want to delete and click Delete [number] items.
3. Click OK.

https://help.apple.com/photos/mac/1.2/#/phtf5e48489c

APPLE: why can't we select all or multiple photos in a simple and quick way?

It is probably a bug in the new iCloud user interface at www.cloud.com. All buttons in the toolbar are still there to handle selected photos but the "Select" button is now missing. That can simply not be intentional. At least, I hope so.

But the bigger problem anyway is, that selecting multiple photos does not download them properly as an entity in one go, but opens a separate download window for each of them. The more pressing problem is that Apple solves the way how batch downloads are handled. Having to deal with 200 download windows opening n Safari, when 200 photos have been selected to download is not feasible. We need a nice and tidy download option back, that will allow to select a range of photos and downloads them as a folder in on one go. And it should have an option to download the original RAW files, not just the edited versions. Right now, the iCloud interface to Photos is more like a write-only memory, we can upload photos, but it hard to get them back. And not being able to retrieve the original RAW files is a deal breaker for serious photographers. Photos is claiming to preserve a lossless workflow.

It is a tool to browse your photos, if you cannot access your computer and to download a few photos if you cannot get access to your main Photos Library.

It is not even suitable for browsing a large iCloud photo library, because there is no search tool. We have to prepare for the emergency by creating plenty of albums in advance, and putting the photos we may need to access online into separate albums for each purpose. The Photos and All Photos view are just too difficult to browse, if the library is not just a small toy library. Even my moderately sized Photos library of 45000 photos cannot be browsed online by scrolling the Moments or the All Photos.

Thanks for the workaround, I found a slightly faster worksaround and from the results, probably explain why Apple turned off the select all features. Seems like the icloud web is unstable handling any action on large amount of photos. So my lcuky guess is that by turning of the "select all" features, chances of having not responding error are minimized.

To delete Multiple Moments

>Go to Photos

>Add new folder by clicking on + sign on the top right

>Ignore the folder naming.

>Now you can select multiple Moments

>Press Delete button on your keyboard (as we can't find any icon associate with the delete)

>Delete selected Items*

*Notes, do not press delete immediately after you have completed the selection, wait for the page to finish loading, cooldown or whatever you might call it, otherwise you may receieve the "not responding error" and you will need to redo it.

I managed to delete 750photos at one go without error.

Good luck.

OK I found a partial solution for this. Since the "select button" option is gone now. The method that I found at least selects all the files in one album. Suppose you have 200 files (images) in one album it selects all the 200 images and lets us download all of these in one go. Keep the photos in "Photos" mode on the right side bar. Select "Photos" button on the right side bar to appear all the photos in separate albums. Do not select "All photos" button just below it. For this I used chrome. Here's how it works,

1. Select one photo in an album,

2. Once you do that, there appears a "+" and a "square" upload sign on the upper right side of the window. The "+" sign is for creating new folder.

3. Click the "+" sign and then automatically all the photos in that album are selected. From there you can download all with one click.

I stumbled upon this yesterday and figured I would share.

To download all photos and videos using Windows OS:

1) Download and install iCloud Photos on your machine (www.apple.com/icloud/photos/)

2) Open "My Computer" and click on the icon for iCloud Photos

3) In the upper left there are options to Download and Upload photos.

4) Chose the "Download Photos and Videos" and a new dialogue box will open.

5) Simply chose "All Photos" or select an album and click download.

This worked for me using Windows 10. I hope this helps someone!

So above is the original technical question posted for this thread.

It has been acknowledged that the (arguably) best way to do this has been removed from iCloud.com.

A mechanism for telling Apple, the only party with the ability to "fix" this, has been given.

If you want to ask additional answerable technical questions that aren't related to this question, please start a new thread. That's how this community runs.

Is there a way to backup all the images one 'already' took or captured in their personal storage? No.

IMO, you want iCloud to be something it may not be. You may want a different product. With a different feature set.

Apple never clearly defined what iCloud is, and what it has to be.

I believe Apple has clearly defined what iCloud is and you don't like it. So be it. Other posters here have given you their "answer" to this "question". You want it to be something else, and it isn't. Tell Apple.

and I never asked you to provide alternatives, I knew those things. I was talking about serious problem iCloud has right now and you seem having no idea either.

This is the type of debate that is not allowed on this community. No volunteer contributor here can possibly answer your "question" or address your disappointment in Apple. Simply saying "serious problem" can't be considered constructive criticism.

Only Apple can and they want you to contact them here >>> http://www.apple.com/feedback/

I found a solution to grab a group of photos by 'moment' or 'date' without clicking each one individually (See image below). There are a couple of buttons, (plus sign and a square with upward pointing line) which only show up if you mouse over a date range of photos. The buttons are small and positioned at the top right of a series of photos. Click either one of those buttons and it will highlight all photos for that 'date' or 'Moment'. Select from the drop-down OR click in a blank area which will make the drop-down disappear. You can then choose the Download option at the top of the page. It's ridiculous that the normal Shift+Click function doesn't work for selecting a series. I'm using icloud from a PC on 3/2017

This video gets the credit for explaining this process:

https://youtu.be/XIr283WnLLY

Apple is known for exceptional design with intention, and thought put into every detail. Why wouldn't that carry over to their business model as well as their product design, and how one affects the other?

This implies a mistake. A miscue. A misreading of their market. This is constructive. I'll agree to disagree.

This states a conspiracy. Not constructive in any way. Absurd. Consistent with conspiracy theorists.

And technically, makes no sense whatsoever. Truth be known, this "missing feature" is likely costing them revenue right now, not building it.

Are you kidding me with this? Wow so we cannot question Apple at all on here?

Yes. Seriously. Not kidding. You accepted that condition when you signed in.

Apple Support Communities Use Agreement

you both seem to be die hard militant Apple people who will never ever question Apple and disparage any who do.

??? I explain things to those who do not seem to understand them.

Militant? Exactly how have you been disparaged?