How to select all photos in iCloud

TO MY KNOWLEDGE THIS IS THE ONLY OPTION AVAILABLE FOR BULK DOWNLOAD AT THIS TIME.

1. Log into iCloud and go to Photos

2. In the primary "Photos" album, Click and hold "Command" button.

3. While holding Command, click each individual picture you want to download.
(NOTE: If you accidentally click white space AT ANY TIME, everything you have selected will deselect,

and you will have to start over again.)

4. Once you made your choices, click the Download Cloud button at the top of the page.

Side Notes:

Clicking the white space and starting over is very frustrating. To reduce the annoyance, I recommend downloading in batches, rather than trying to do it all at once.

What was easiest for me, was to reduce the thumbnail size down to its minimum with the slider at the top of the page. That loads about 50-60 images on a 13" Macbook. I then clicked the download button. After they were safe on my computer, I clicked delete, as each image is still selected. Saves me from having to click them again to get rid of them.

Hope this is helpful to someone.

There is a trick, if is you click the memories tab, you’ll see small ‘+’ icons for each day. If you click that (it will select all photos of that day) and then click the download icon, it is faster than individually clicking on each photo.

Ok guys listen up, I had approximately 1.3k plus photos that needed to be deleted. Here's how I managed to do it under 15 mins albeit it still took abit of hard work and lil bit of time. But first:

Preface.

My guess when they made this iCloud thing, they didn't want people to have an easy way to inventorize and quickly delete the photos / vids cos to upsell iCloud paid packages (insert Apple has changed remark here). So my guess when I discovered this loop a disgruntled employee got fed up of this too so he/she wrote this small hack in.

The Problem.

Once logged into iCloud, we all know you've gotta choose the photos one by one, or you could choose multiple photos by holding 'command' key BUT if you're not good with the mouse and you accidentally click the white space in between, it's game over. You gotta start again. It's the worse feeling ever cos you've been so diligent and one mistake you gotta start egain. Basically it *****. Then I noticed on one of the threads if you go to 'Moments' you press the '+' button, it'll choose all the photos from that day. So that helps a bit if you took a lot of photos that day.

The Solution.

Here's where the hack comes in. I noticed when I chose a day that I took a lot of photos and pressed the delete button, it'd delete as expected, BUT ALSO pre select the following photos to the amount of last deleted minus 2. So for example: I chose a day that had 35 photos, clicked the deleted button, once deleted, click the delete button again and it'd say delete: 33 photos. Then click yes. It'll keep on going down to zero. Everytime, minus 2.

So then I thought, okay how bout I'll pick another busy day, click '+' button and keep on clicking photos but super duper carefully. So I managed to make it to 109 clicked photos. Then press delete and repeat the way my process. I figured at this rate it'd just take a few cycles and I'll be able to finish it. Woo hoo. UNFORTUNATELY, it only works at a max of 69. So the next round of delete it said 'confirm delete 69 photos' as opposed to the 'confirm delete 107 photos' I was hoping for. Nonetheless it was still alright, the cycle was the same 67 then 65 etc.

Anyway, I hope this helps. Peace from Malaysia!

God forbid Apple offer the service that their customers actually want, Gail. Instead, belittle them for trying to educate YOU on a MORE USEFUL AND FUNCTIONAL platform while pointing them to other services lol. Great business model👍

Actually, in my version of MacOS Mojave, I had to use "Export" from Photos, not "download." I was leery of re-enabling Photos because older versions would aggressively suck in every image file from every device ever plugged into my computer, even freezing the computer for hours while doing it. But that horrible behavior seems to be avoidable now. So I did succeed in copying my hundreds of iPhone pictures to an external hard drive, without moving thousands of external picture files into the Evil Photos App. This process was very frustrating, especially to a Windows refugee and retired software exec who knows what CAN be done. But at least there seems now to be a workaround via Photos.

God forbid Apple offer the service that their customers actually want, Gail. Instead, belittle them for trying to educate YOU on a MORE USEFUL AND FUNCTIONAL platform while pointing them to other services lol. Great business model👍you

I am not associated with Apple in any way other than being a user just like you. And again, if you would take the time to educate yourself on how iCloud Photos works, you would see that for downloading all photos to your computer, or for deleting all photos in iCloud, you have alternatives to Command + Click. God forbid that you read any documentation.

GB

You’re missing the point. It’s 2018. If someone has to read documentation to train themselves to carry out a basic function (that was already available before) the product has failed to be intuitive. It’s no longer helping creativity, but hindering it, causing consumers to find workarounds. This thread is alive and well for very valid reasons. Apple’s whole claim to fame is that ‘it just works’. If this fails to be the case, Apple has nothing but overpriced unnecessarily complicated junk.

Hello,

Putting my grain of salt in there too... Offering web hosting services conveniently is awesome but holding customers that way is ridiculous. I have spent quite some time to find a solution to download all of my photos from Icloud and as of now, none of the answers posted on this forum did work. I do have an Iphone with Icloud services that I intend to stop using if I don't find a solution to bulk download my content off the cloud.

Iphone 6 / PC user (Linux OS). Possibly future Android user for first time ever lol.

Thanks in advance for any solutions provided!

From Library, Under “Photos” 

> Select “Moments” 

> Select “+” to “Add all items into new album” option accordingly to the date 

> Added photos into the new Album 

From Library, Under “My Albums”

> Select an album 

> Select “Trash” icon (If you want to delete)

> OK 

No, downloading all photos was *not* the question, besides we all know how to do that.

How do you mass-delete all photos at once - and quickly - is the question.

The only method for deleting all photos in a very large set (besides the *ridiculous* option to CTRL-click each photo or each "moment" individually) would be to disable Photo Library on all iDevices and wait one month for photos to expire in the iCloud. That option is unacceptable! Nobody wants to wait 30 days to do something that should be doable in 2 clicks. So please, tell us how to select all photos for deletion (and no more weaseling around), or stop pretending that you have an answer.

Even for downloading all photos from iCloud, the only option I see is to select the photos one at a time (the CTRL-click option).

So, enlighten me on how to bulk select all photos for download through the browser. I'm afraid, there's none.

That's why I shared the link to the tool that does the download job pretty satisfactorily.

But that said, I do agree that my response was not appropriate to the question of how to just "bulk select" the photos on iCloud.

I was more driven by the bulk-selection-followed-by-download need, and to that end, the tool I shared does an amazing job.

For the deletion part, one sub-optimal option (which still depends on the temporal distribution of the photos across months in a year) is to use the iPhone photos app, and do time-bucket wise selection bulk selection. But then that would make sense only if the photos are clustered temporally. If all the 1000 photos are taken, each on a different date, then we are out of luck. On the other hand if they have been taken over say 50 days, it's just 50 selections, followed by a delete.

And one photos are deleted from a device, we all know that they can be permanently "BULK" deleted (of course with bulk selection)

This is an absolutely disgusting slimy attempt to take control of my personal data. I accidentally enabled iCloud photos and now I have to command-click every single one to remove them from your servers. I bet the line of code to select all with command-A is commented out in the source code. It obviously knows how to interpret command-clicks... why no "select all" Apple? Disgusting.

Hey! As I`ve bought my first IPhone, I thougth that`s the most stupid issue that I can`t download ALL photos. Couple weeks ago I`ve found these tipps https://osxtips.net/download-photos-from-icloud/

It works! :)

You can download all of them to an iPhone. Just turn on iCloud Photos on the device. There is no need to go through any selection process. Turn on the option, the photos download. If you are low on memory, turn on Optimize Photos, as many full resolution photos as your memory will allow will download, rest will download as thumbnails that you can click on to download individually.

GB

Apple's slimy tactics to get you to buy more storage space because deleting your unwanted pictures are so hard is finally catching up to them! iPhone sales are at the lowest ever!

I love the diehards making excuses for Apples' slime tactics too. it's so funny to read! Like there's a genuine reason they removed the functionality lol. Such sheep/flock mentality in humans. So evident.

The thousands of people who marked this thread are wrong but you are right!