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.
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. Download iCloud Photos to PC/Mac from iCloud.com. It is a quite easy and convenient way to log in.
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.
How To Download All Photos From Icloud To Macbook Air
...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.
How to download pictures or photos from iCloud to Mac or Windows?
Probably every Mac user knows what the iCloud is. When you know how to use it properly it's an irreplaceable feature. However, lets describe it for a new Mac users, iCloud is an internet storage which saves your photos, videos, documents, music, apps and other your data. It not only stores them, but also shares information between your devices if you signed in a couple of them with the same Apple ID. With the help of iCloud you are able to share information not only between your devices, but also with your friends, by giving them some shared links.
There isn't a question how to store into iCloud, it's easy - just sign in with your device, but to download something from iCloud for some users is a problem. Especially, when we talk about photos, since it became a common question, we decided to show you step-by-step instructions on how to reach and download your photos stored in iCloud. Downloading photos from iCloud may become a problem not only for Mac users but to Windows users as well. This guide will show how to download photos for Windows user.
Table of Contents:
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How to Download Photos from iCloud to Mac OS or Windows PC
If you have stored pictures or photos inside iCloud and decided that you need to have them in your computer or external drive? There is a pretty easy way to obtain them by signing in iCloud website with your Apple ID.
Launch your web browser and go to iCloud website, log in there with your Apple ID.
Click on the Photos icon from list. Select your appreciated photos by simple click on it or hold Command and select couple of them, once you have finished selecting click the download button located in top right and looks like a cloud with the arrow showing down.
After download your photos will appear in a download folder or anywhere you have declared in your browser preferences. This method works on any operating system including Mac OS, iOS, Windows, Android or Linux which is able to use web browsers.
How to download all pictures from iCloud?
How To Download All Photos From Icloud Website To Mac
How to download one or couple pictures we already know, but if you need all images in your computer you will probably wonder is there a way how to download all files faster.
Luckily there is:
How To Download All Pictures From Icloud Mac Catalina
- First you need to open Photos in iCloud website as listed above.
- Then choose All Photos album and scroll to very bottom of the All Photos album and click on the Select Photos button in the top of the iCloud Photos bar.
- Then hold down the shift button on your keyboard and click on the very last image in the all photos album, this should select every photo and iCloud Photos bar state the number of items selected.
- Next steps same like above, just click on the Download and confirm you want to download all the files and look for your download folder. Unfortunately, there aren't any buttons like select all or download all and you have to mark them manually.
Alternative download method to Windows PC
Since iCloud is Apple production, windows computers doesn't have default software to reach it, but luckily Apple released a software for windows.
First you have to download and install the iCloud synchronization software, which you can download from Apple.
Launch iCloud Photos and select Download photos and videos in the file explorer navigation bar, then choose the date or years of images you prefer to download. iCloud will download your selected pictures to a specified folder which you find by a path PicturesiCloud PicturesDownloads.
This method helps a lot, when you intend to download all photos or pictures from iCloud to your Windows computer.