My wife had about 2 TB of photos and videos in iCloud. That doesn't fit on a phone, let alone a MacBook. I bought a 6 TB external drive, plugged it into the laptop and ran PicFrom. The first copy took a couple of days. Now once a week I plug the drive in, click Save Photos, and the new shots come down in a few minutes.
Sergey, creator of PicFrom

I decided to switch from Apple to Huawei and bought a new phone. In ten years I'd built up a big photo archive, and it doesn't fit on the old phone or the new one. An archive like that needs a place of its own. With PicFrom I saved all my photos from iCloud to a drive, and I've stopped worrying that I'll lose them.

Tatyana

First run

Click Save Photos and choose a folder

It can be a folder on your Mac or on an external drive. You're already signed in to iCloud on this Mac, so PicFrom doesn't ask for your Apple ID or password. Files go into folders named Year / Year-Month / Year-Month-Day.

Archive/
└─ 2024/
   └─ 2024-08/
      └─ 2024-08-11/
         ├─ 20240811_142233_IMG_4821.HEIC
         ├─ 20240811_142233_IMG_4821.MOV
         └─ 20240811_153901_IMG_4823.HEIC

The archive opens in Finder like any other folder.

While it copies

You can see how much is already done

The window shows how many files and gigabytes are already on the drive. A large video can take a while to download from iCloud, so it gets a progress bar of its own. You can pause the copy and pick it up later.

Files are written straight to the folder you chose.

The next run

Nothing downloads twice

PicFrom keeps a log of what it has copied next to the archive. If your Mac falls asleep, the drive comes unplugged or the internet drops, just click Save Photos again. It continues from the same spot and also picks up the photos you've taken since last time.

On the next run, only new photos are added.

From an iPhone

No iCloud? Copy straight from your iPhone

If iCloud Photos is off, or your iCloud storage ran out, some photos live only on your iPhone. The free PicFrom app for iPhone copies them over your home Wi‑Fi into the same date folders on your drive. It deletes nothing from the phone and skips photos that are already in the archive.

How to copy photos from an iPhone →

PicFrom on the iPhone sending photos to the Mac

The iPhone shows how many photos it has sent.

Details

What ends up on your drive

Photos and videos are saved exactly as they are in iCloud. You can open them in Finder or any other app, and you won't need PicFrom for that.

Originals

Files aren't recompressed or converted. HEIC stays HEIC, and videos keep their original format.

Downloads from iCloud

If Optimize Mac Storage is turned on, PicFrom downloads the originals from iCloud one at a time.

Date folders

You can move the archive to another drive or computer, and it will still be easy to find your way around.

iCloud stays as it is

PicFrom only reads your photos. It doesn't delete or change anything in Photos, in iCloud or on the iPhone it copies from.

Free space check

Before copying, PicFrom checks how much space is free on the drive. If there isn't enough, it offers to save the newest photos.

Large libraries

Files go straight to the drive you picked, so a library of several hundred gigabytes doesn't have to fit on your Mac's internal disk.

All your iCloud photos
on your own drive.