I'm the developer of Export iCloud, so take this with that in mind. Nobody in my family has time to sort photos, so they pile up until every iPhone runs out of space. So I stay on a low iCloud tier. Every so often I export the photos to two portable hard drives, then delete them from iCloud. My family can still share photos, and the phones don't fill up. iCloud.com only lets you download 1,000 items at a time, so I built a desktop app that exports the whole library as original files to any folder or drive. Your Apple password goes only to Apple. It isn't sent to my server or saved. Free options exist and may be enough: icloudpd (command line) and Apple's data copy request at privacy.apple.com (takes days and arrives as ZIPs). A warning if you copy this routine: deleting from iCloud removes the photos from every device on that account, so check your backups first. Downsides: the app isn't code-signed yet, so you'll see an install warning. It's free for 200 files a month, then paid (packs start at $6.99 for 5,000 files). I'd really like feedback: what would stop you from trying this, and is the pricing clear? https://export-icloud.com/?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=sideproject-story   submitted by   /u/yangzuojie [link]   [comments]