Then choose File>Export and export originals to some folder (preferably on a fast disk). Go to the library photos in the Photos app and select all. It is about a third of the way through after a week. After a while, it settled down to slowly downloading everything. So I decided to start a new library on an external 2TB SSD, make it the main library, turn on iCloud for Photos and turn off optimize so that the full photos would come down and I could then dedupe.ĭownloading was initially sporadic and slow. There appears to be no software that can dedupe an optimized library (though I reckon in theory it should be possible, but it's probably Apple's fault in not attaching enough info to the compressed 'thumbnail' files). PowerPhotos is useful for the task of merging libraries. My plan was to merge all my photos to a single library, keep them in iCloud with optimizing on. I can relate to this situation (>100000 photos and >3000 videos). Oh, and don't get me started about using icloud with a VPN. I guess the bottom line is that I have one question for Apple: 'Huh?' Is it really too much to want to download my icloud photos to my computer in a timely fashion? These are jpg and mov files. I'm already paying Apple, I'd have to pay Google too. Google photos is a good option, photos are free, but you have to pay for video space. I guess I really pay apple for icloud storage so I can backup my devices but it sure is annoying for photos. The whole icloud photo system is a stink bomb. 10-20gb, even slowly should take 30 minutes at the most.

I downloaded a 16GB Microsoft Virtualization session for VMWare in about 4 or 5 minutes. So I figure there's no way it's more than 10-20gb of photos/videos of mine.īeen over 24 hours and I still have 1557 items to download, not even half done. I only have 200GB of icloud space and 90GB of that is free AND it's shared with my family. Gives me a polite message saying I have a large amount of information so it might take a while. I right-click on the icloud taskbar icon, then click download photos.

Download icloud for windows 10