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Comment by lostlogin

1 day ago

What’s missing?

The files are there on the Mac, they are there to download on the cloud (various mentions of method mentioned here).

There is NO button on Mac to download photos from iCloud. You can only do this from your phone and then synchronise them to your Mac.

  • Yes, there is a button on Mac: https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/use-icloud-photos-pht...

    As long as you are signed into the Mac with the same iCloud account used on the iPhone, this will download them all. No, you do not need to get them all downloaded to the iPhone ever for any reason for this to work. Period. You need to stop repeating that, because it is wrong. How many people have to say the same thing?

    Yes, you will have to go into a hidden folder to access the Originals once they're downloaded if you want to copy them somewhere else, but it's like two clicks.

    • I've been using Mac since Mac OS X 10.4 (~2005) and was under the same impression.

      However, in reality, when you use the same Apple account on both devices with the Photos app on macOS (yes, with the 'Download Originals' checkbox enabled), it only downloads photos that you upload from your phone.

      And if you look at the iCloud tab in the Photos app, it says 'Automatically _upload_ and store all your photos and videos in iCloud', so it works from Mac to iCloud, and doesn't help to download full iCloud library.

      3 replies →

  • One of us is missing something. In Photos.app I clicked download originals. The photos are there on my Mac. It’s bit gross to get at them though - right click on app > show package contents.

    Are you wanting a way that doesn’t involve the photos app?

    You can do that from iCloud over a browser.

    • If you open the Photos app (macOS) connected to iCloud with an empty library, there will be no photos until you import them from your phone. Hope this is clear now.

      iCloud via browser has a limit of 1k photos per download.

      4 replies →