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Comment by ndegruchy

1 day ago

While not free, and not for any other platform than macOS. The program Parachute[1] in the App Store is very nice in downloading both photos from your library as well as files from the various locations.

[1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/parachute-backup/id6748614170?...

8 comments

ndegruchy

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dawnerd  1 day ago

Another option for iOS at least is PhotoSync. It’s nice, you can pull from photos and push to basically any remote service or local server. I have it backing up to both my nas and b2.

8fingerlouie  1 day ago

It works well enough, but it's not without flaws either.

The desktop version works reliably, if you can get macOS to keep shares mounted for long enough, and mount them on request. The scheduler is also kinda wonky.

The iOS version has so far never finished an incremental backup overnight of our ~1TB individual libraries. It handles resume/suspend well, but for some reason, while it exports unmodified originals, it doesn't include AAE files, which the desktop version does.

PhotoSync does everything right, with the exception of trying to keep state of what has been exported, which makes little sense as it doesn't support restoring photos.

teamspirit  1 day ago

Anyone know if it works with ADP? I emailed them months ago but no one ever replied.

On a related question, is there a download solution that does work with ADP? I’m looking to mitigate any potential account lockout issues for family members (and, no, they will not switch out of the ecosystem).

  • 8fingerlouie  1 day ago

    It does. It uses PhotoKit to access photos, so it basically uses your Apple Photos app (iOS or Mac) to download the photos.

    The only scripted solution I can think of that works with ADP is osxphotos[^1], but that also uses PhotoKit, and requires the user to be signed in.

    Personally I use PhotoSync [^2] to backup our photos from phones to a NAS. It works reliably, and supports exporting unmodified originals as well as edited versions, and XMP/AAE metadata alongside it.

    ^1: https://github.com/RhetTbull/osxphotos

    ^2: https://www.photosync-app.com/home

SilverElfin  1 day ago

Is there a way to verify this all is safe to use? Like it won’t do something weird privacy wise? Any equivalent for windows?

  • reconnecting  1 day ago

    I have the same paranoia, so I was happy to learn that someone made an open-source downloader for iCloud.