how to download all your photos from icloud, at full quality.

if your family has used iphones for a while, icloud photos probably holds a big share of your last ten years. it's convenient, it's there on every device, and it's easy to forget it's the only full copy you have. wanting your own copy, on a drive at home or next to the pictures from before the iphone, is a sensible thing to want.

apple gives you a few ways to do it. which one fits depends on how many photos you have and which computer you use. before any of them, though, there's one thing worth knowing.

first, a word about deleting

icloud photos keeps every device in step. apple's own support page says it plainly: when you delete something from a device with icloud photos turned on, it's also removed from icloud and from your other devices. so please don't start clearing space on your phone to make room, and don't delete anything until your new copy is finished and checked. downloading never removes anything. deleting does.

before you start

• check how much there is. on your iphone, open settings, tap your name, then icloud, and you'll see how much space photos use. that's roughly how much you'll be downloading.
• make room for more than that. some methods arrive as compressed files you'll need to unpack, so for a while you'll have two copies. an external drive is often the easiest place to put it all.
• one folder for this export. name it plainly, like icloud photos, october 2026. everything from icloud goes in there, untouched.
• one apple account at a time. each person's icloud library is separate, so each person in the family needs their own download.

the easiest way for a big library: ask apple for a copy

for ten or fifteen years of photos, the simplest route is apple's data and privacy page, the tool apple built for getting a copy of what you store with them.

1. go to privacy.apple.com and sign in with the apple account that holds your photos.
2. choose request a copy of your data.
3. tick icloud photos, and leave the rest unticked unless you want it too.
4. choose the largest file size you're comfortable downloading. a big library is split into several pieces of that size.
5. finish the request.

apple checks that the request is really from you, gathers everything, and lets you know when it's ready. apple says this can take up to seven days. once it's ready, apple says you have 14 days to download it before it's removed, so it's worth setting aside an afternoon when the email comes. download every piece into your folder and count them before you unpack anything. apple notes that photos and videos come in their original formats.

if you have a mac: export the originals from photos

if your library is on a mac, the photos app can save every original file to a folder, with no waiting.

1. open photos, then photos > settings, then the icloud tab, and choose download originals to this mac. if it was set to optimize storage, the mac only had smaller versions until now.
2. wait for the download to finish. the bottom of the library view shows progress. for a big library this can take a long while, so leave the mac awake and connected.
3. select everything in your library, then choose file > export > export unmodified original, and pick your folder or external drive.

unmodified original is the important part. it saves each photo and video exactly as it was captured, including the date stored inside the file. the other export option makes new copies, which is fine for sharing but not what you want for keeping.

for a few hundred: icloud.com

on any computer, you can go to icloud.com/photos, sign in, select photos and press the download button. apple lets you choose unmodified originals there too, which is the one to pick. the catch is size: apple allows up to 1,000 at a time. that's perfect for a single trip or one year, but slow going for a whole library, which is why the request above is usually easier.

on a windows pc, apple's icloud for windows app can also bring your icloud photos into file explorer, if you'd rather work that way.

keeping the dates, and the odd file type

the date a photo was taken is usually stored inside the photo itself, so original files carry it with them. that's the main reason to choose originals every time. a few things to expect:

• heic files. many iphone photos are saved as heic, not jpeg. some older computers need extra software to open them. keep them anyway; they're the originals, and newer tools read them fine.
• live photos. a live photo may come out as a still picture and a short video side by side. both belong to the same moment, so keep both.
• edits. photos you edited may export as the untouched original. that's what you want for an archive; the moment itself is all there.

check the copy before you trust it

• compare the counts. the photos app on your iphone shows how many photos and videos are in your library. your folder should come close.
• look at both ends. find your oldest photo and your newest. if both are there, that's a good sign.
• open a handful. pick photos from different years and make sure they open. play a few videos all the way through.

then make a second copy somewhere else, so your photos live in two healthy places, not one. only after that is it safe to think about clearing space.

then put it all in order

icloud is usually one part of the picture. there may be years in google photos, old phones in a drawer or an old hard drive in the closet. once each source has its own folder, how to organize old digital photos, by when they happened walks through bringing them together.

where treasure box fits

treasure box is the private life archive we're building for exactly this moment, when photos from icloud, google, old phones and old drives finally come together. you bring them in from your browser, it reads the date each one was taken, and it lays them out on one private timeline, so 2016 sits next to 2016 no matter which phone or service it came from. it tells you when your files are safely stored, and you can take a full copy out anytime.

if that sounds like a good home for your photos, see how treasure box works or read our privacy promises.

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