icloud-photos-downloader/icloud_photos_downloader

iCloud Photos Downloader is a command-line tool that pulls your photos and videos out of iCloud and saves them to a folder on your computer. It works on Linux, Windows, and macOS, so you can run it on a laptop, desktop, or even a home server or NAS device. It is a volunteer-maintained open-source project. The tool has three main modes. In the default copy mode, it downloads photos that are in iCloud but not yet on your local machine. In sync mode, it also deletes local files if you have already deleted them from iCloud, keeping both sides in step. In move mode, it downloads photos to your local drive and then removes them from iCloud, which can be useful for freeing up iCloud storage. It handles Live Photos, RAW image files, and RAW plus JPEG pairs, and it avoids downloading duplicates automatically. You can run it once as a one-time download or set it to watch for changes in iCloud at a regular interval, re-checking however often you choose. There are options to limit how far back it scans, update photo metadata timestamps, and tune how it handles large libraries. Before using it, you need to adjust two settings on your iPhone or iPad. You have to turn on the option to allow access to iCloud data on the web, and you have to turn off Apple's Advanced Data Protection for iCloud, because that end-to-end encryption prevents third-party tools from reaching your files. Installation options include a standalone executable you can download directly, or you can install through Docker, PyPI, npm, or the Arch Linux AUR. The project is actively looking for new maintainers, as the current team of volunteers is small.