cleanexit0

This looks useful. I ran into a very similar problem recently and ended up building a small tool for my own use: https://github.com/cleanexit0/darwin-photos

It's macOS-only and intentionally minimal — the goal is just to download originals from iCloud Photos to disk without syncing everything into Photos.app first.

To be clear on limitations: it doesn't preserve albums or other metadata yet, and it's not meant to replace more full-featured tools. It’s mainly for the "I just want my photos off iCloud for backup" case.

Reading the comments here, it sounds like metadata preservation is a big pain point for many people — I'd be curious whether that's the first thing folks would want added, or if simple bulk export already covers most needs.

feel free to install the latest version and try: - `darwin-photos albums` list album names - `darwin-photos ls --album <album_name> --json` will list all photos of the album

do let me know if any valuable feature you're looking for

want to clarify if you want to: 1. be able to filter photos by passing in album info, such as `./darwin-photos ls --album "vacation" --start 2023-01-01 --local`, OR 2. backup photos + album info so that we know what album each photos belong to in the backup file (i assume you mean this)

if 2nd, no it is currently not preserving that. it is keeping the original photos only, without much metadata encoded

why do you want album / tags info? can u help me understand your usecase better, thank you very much

hey ggm, not yet but can add.

to speed this up, can you explain what exactly features are you looking for? - album info of a photo? - tags on a photo? - etc

lmk!