Download All Photos From Icloud To Mac 2018

Download From Icloud To Mac
Download All Photos From Icloud To Mac 2018 Free
How To Download All Photos From Icloud

iCloud is a great place to store photos as it means you can access them on all of your devices, from anywhere in the world. But downloading photos to your Mac has its benefits too.

First of all, Mac has greater disk space than other iOS devices and dwarfs the 5GB of free storage offered by iCloud. You can also easily connect an external hard drive for extra storage whenever you need it. As it's recommended to backup your photos in more than one place, keeping them on your Mac makes sense. That way, you’ll be able to access them offline.

Select Photos Preferences and, in the General tab, click Use as System Photo Library. In the iCloud tab, make sure iCloud Photo Library is enabled. It may not be, because you switched libraries. Once All Photos are selected, click on the Download icon to begin the process of downloading all iCloud Photos to your computer. Unless you have changed the default settings, all iCloud Photos will be downloaded to ‘Downloads’ Folder on your computer. Download All Photos From iCloud to PC Using iCloud For Windows.

Secondly, Mac is the best platform from which to organize, manage, and edit your photos. Apps such as Spotlight and iMovie and third-party tools like Adobe Photoshop give you control over your images that no other device can offer.

But whatever your reasons, you’ve come here to find out how to get pictures from iCloud so let’s get into showing you how to do exactly that.

First, make sure your Mac has enough disk space

If you plan on downloading all of your iCloud photos to your Mac you could be looking at quite a few gigabytes, particularly so if you’re on one of the paid iCloud storage plans. So before you download, you need to check that you have enough space on your disk.

How to check your available hard drive space

On macOS 10.7 or later:

Select About This Mac from the Apple menu.
Click More Info, then click Storage.

On macOS 10.6 or earlier:

Open a Finder window.
Select your hard drive from the sidebar.
Go to the File menu and click Get Info.

If available space is looking limited, you’ll need to remove some of the things you don’t need to make room for the incoming photos.

How to clean up your startup disk

If you’re running macOS Sierra or higher, Mac has a built-in Optimize Storage feature that stops your hard drive becoming full by moving files over to the cloud. The problem is, it moves them to iCloud which might well be already full with photos. So it’s not ideal.

Fortunately, you don’t have to rely on Optimize Storage. You can go ahead and free up space yourself by cleaning up cache files, getting rid of localization files, removing old iOS and iTunes backups, and emptying out the Trash. Be warned, though, not all of these methods are quick and straightforward.

If you like to know how to free up disk space manually, check out our article on “What is Startup Disk Full on Mac OS?”

Right now, though, we’re just going to show you the easy way to get rid of old files and free up space. This way involves CleanMyMac X. This utility tool scans your entire system for junk files and removes them in minutes to free up gigabytes of space.

You can download CleanMyMac X for free here. Do it now.

...Done it? Great! Here’s how to perform a Smart Cleanup to rid your system of unneeded files in a few clicks.

Launch CleanMyMac X.
Click on Smart Cleanup from the sidebar.
Hit Scan and wait while CleanMyMac scans your system for junk files that can be safely removed.
Hit Run and enjoy a whole lot more disk space.

How to download individual photos from iCloud

Now that you’ve made room for your photos, let’s look at how to download from iCloud to Mac. If you want to pick and choose which photos to save to your computer, you’ll need to download images individually.

Here’s how it’s done:

Open a browser and go to iCloud.com, then log in with your Apple ID.
Click on Photos.
Click on any photo that you want to download. When it loads, click the download icon in the top right corner of the screen.
Repeat with every photo that you want to download.

Any photo that you download will be sent to your Downloads folder unless you’ve specified otherwise.

How to download all photos from iCloud

Downloading individual photos is quick and easy. Unfortunately, when clicking on the download icon, there is no “download all” option. That’s because no such button exists. We wish it existed and we hope that Apple will include it in future versions of iCloud, but for now, we have to make do with a workaround.

Because Apple also decided to remove the ability to Shift+click in iCloud.com, you'll need to download files in bulk from the Photos app on your Mac.

Here’s how:

Open Photos.
When all of your images load, use Command+A to select them all.
Open up the folder where you want to save the images.
Drag the highlighted images into the folder. A green + icon and red number showing how many photos are about to be saved to your Mac will show.

That’s it, job done!

You should make a regular habit of downloading images from your iCloud account to your Mac or external hard drive as an additional method of backup. It’s easy to do and ensures you can access your precious photos even if you have no internet connection. Before downloading in bulk, make sure to check how much disk space you have available and use CleanMyMac X to quickly free up a few gigabytes.

You may want to Download All Photos From iCloud to PC as an additional backup, to clear up storage space in your iCloud Account or for other reasons. You will find below the steps to select and Download All Photos from iCloud to PC.

Download ALL Photos From iCloud to PC

As you must have noticed, there is no ‘Download All’ or ‘Select All’ button on iCloud. Also, you won’t be able to use your mouse to select Multiple or All Photos on iCloud.

This can be a problem, if there are thousands of Photos in your iCloud Account and you want to download them all to your Windows computer.

Luckily, there is a keyboard shortcut to select All iCloud Photos and you will find below 2 different methods to Download All Photos from iCloud to your Windows computer.

1. Download All Photos From iCloud to PC Using Keyboard Shortcut

If the number of Photos that you want to download from iCloud to PC is less than 1,000, you can follow this method to select and download up to 999 photos from iCloud to PC.

If you are trying to download over 1,000 photos, you can move to the next method as provided below in this guide.

1. Go to icloud.com on your Windows Computer.

2. Login to your iCloud Account by entering your Apple ID and Password.

3. Once you are signed-in, click on the Photos icon.

4. In iCloud Photos, make sure you are on Photos Tab and click on the First Photo.

5. Press and hold Shift + Ctrl + Alt Keys and press the Down Arrow Key to select All iCloud Photos.

Download All Photos From Icloud To Mac 2018

Note: You can also scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the Last Photo.

6. Once All Photos are selected, click on the Download icon to begin the process of downloading all iCloud Photos to your computer.

Unless you have changed the default settings, all iCloud Photos will be downloaded to ‘Downloads’ Folder on your computer.

2. Download All Photos From iCloud to PC Using iCloud For Windows

The only way to download more than 1,000 Photos at once from iCloud to PC is to download and install ‘iCloud For Windows’ program on your computer.

1. Download iCloud For Windows application on your Computer.

2. Once the download is complete, click on the downloaded iCloud Setup file and follow the onscreen instructions to Install iCloud For Windows on your computer.

3. When prompted, Sign-in to your iCloud Account by entering your Apple ID and Password.

4. On the next screen, select Photos option by clicking in the little box next to Photos.

On the pop-up, select iCloud Photo Library option and click on Done.

Note: You can change iCloud download location by clicking on Change.

5. Click on Apply to begin the process of Syncing all iCloud Photos to the Downloads Folder on your computer.

Download From Icloud To Mac

6. Once all iCloud Photos are downloaded, open the File Explorer on your computer.

7. In the File Explorer window, click on iCloud Photos tab in the left-pane. In the right-pane, click on the Downloads Icon.

8. On the next screen, click on the Downloads Folder to see all your iCloud Photos arranged in different sub-folders.

To make a Backup, you can copy the entire Downloads Folder to Desktop, USB drive or any other location on your computer.

Add iCloud to Windows Start Menu or Task Bar