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.
How to download iCloud photos to your Mac using Photos. If you just want to make sure that you have a full-res copy of a photo on your Mac before deleting it from your iPhone, you can download the. Sign in to iCloud to access your photos, videos, documents, notes, contacts, and more. Use your Apple ID or create a new account to start using Apple services. 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. Download iCloud For Windows application on your Computer. Once the download is complete, click on the downloaded iCloud Setup file and follow the onscreen instructions to Install iCloud. Access iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch backups via iCloud.com. Pros: It is a very convenient and secured. Since iCloud files are stored locally on your Mac, several third-party apps let you browse these files, in a more user-friendly manner than using the Finder.
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.
Click on Download and save the files to your Mac’s Storage. After all files are downloaded, you need to move them from Downloads to Documents or any other folder on Mac. Because you cannot download whole folder from iCloud.com, you need to download files and move them to your desired folders later. Alternatives to iCloud Drive for Mac. Well, you can download them directly from iCloud to your Mac! If all your photos are on your iPhone, you can simply share them with your Mac via AirDrop. If they’re not, though, it can take a long time to download your older photos to your iPhone, and then share them. It’s much quicker to download them from the cloud to your computer.
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:
Copy Icloud Photos To Mac
- 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.
iCloud is a very effective assistant to help us back up iPhone data, and with iCloud Keychain technique, the backed up iPhone data will be 100% secure. What's more, iCloud backup files can be downloaded to your PC or Mac for direct local storage or for freeing up the limited 5GB memory through accessing iCloud.com or iCloud control panel. Besides, in the last part of this page, we will introduce an iCloud backup alternative to you, which is EaseUS MobiMover Free, the unique free iPhone data transfer to back up and transfer all your iPhone data to the computer with only one-click. If you need to back up iPhone or iPad next time, do try MobiMover as it never let you down!
How to download iCloud backup from iCloud.com
You can download any file you have backed up from iPhone, iPad or iPod touch to iCloud, including Photos, Notes, Reminders, Contacts, and Calendar. And it is totally free to download iCloud backup to PC/Mac.
1. Open a web browser on PC or Mac, type iCloud.com and go to the website.
2. Enter your Apple ID username and password to log in to the main page.
3. If you want to download iCloud backup photos, simply select the photos you want to download to PC/Mac, and click the download button on the top right corner on the screen.
4. Except for photos, if you want to download other iCloud backup files, like notes, reminders, contacts and calendar, you are only allowed to preview and copy the specific files as there is no download option for these categories.
5. Set the route to save downloaded iCloud backup photos.
How to download iCloud backup from iCloud control panel
Using iCloud control panel to download iCloud backup files is also a good choice. And the only requirement for the method is to download and install iCloud control panel to your computer.
1. Download and install iCloud control panel from Apple official website.
2. Sign in with your Apple ID username and password.
3. /world-at-war-for-mac-download.html. Go to Settings, click iCloud and choose the category files you want to download to your computer.
4. Click download button after choosing certain files.
5. Check the downloaded files at iCloud Photos/Notes/Ringtone/Calendar folder.
Above two methods are for accessing and downloading iCloud backup from iCloud clients, we can also access iCloud backup on iPhone/iPad, Mac and Windows PC to view, delete iCloud backup or change the location, read the guidance carefully if you need.
How to back up iPhone/iPad with MobiMover Free
Download File From Icloud To Mac
Except for iTunes and iCloud backup, here comes the EaseUS MobiMover Free to back up and transfer the whole iPhone or iPad data to computer in a completely free way. Unlike iTunes and iCloud backup which can't be read and manage for the unknown codes, MobiMover enables you to view and manage the iPhone back up files easily. In summary, MobiMover supports four data transfer types: export iPhone data to computer, import files from computer to iPhone, copy data between two iOS devices, and custom transfer. For backing up iPhone data, we need to choose the model of transferring iPhone data to computer.
Step 1. Connect your iPhone/iPad to your PC with a USB cable. You need to tap 'Trust This Computer' on the device screen if a pop-up appears. StartEaseUS MobiMoverand select the 'Phone to PC' mode in the main interface. Now you can head to back up your connected iDevice data by clicking 'Next'.
Step 2. MobiMover enables you to back up everything from your iPhone/iPad to the PC in a readable way. Here, you can customize a location to keep the transferred data on your computer, otherwise, it will keep on your computer desktop by default. Choose the apps you want to back up and click 'Transfer'.
Step 3. MobiMover will work on transferring the selected files from iPhone/iPad to the designated place. When it completes, you can go to the path, find the backup folder and open it. If the exported data is saved as a .html file on your computer, you need to open it with a browser and view details on the web page.