alt Hacker News> or allowing you to download iCloud Photos in the native Photos application on Mac
Here’s the official documentation page for exporting directly using Photos for Mac without syncing everything locally: https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/download-photos-to-yo...
You can also choose to sync all photos locally with Photos for Mac by setting “Download Originals to this Mac” as described on this page which is what I do to keep a local copy: https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/photos-settings-pht51...
If your Mac doesn’t have enough space, export them to a USB hard drive or if you’re using the download originals option, first move your library location to the USB drive as also described on the link above.
Thank you.
That's exactly what I expected to work, but for some reason this approach failed for me on a new Mac with an empty Photos library. I enabled "Download Originals," but 10+ years of iCloud photos never appeared. There's no manual "fetch all from iCloud" button, no progress indicator, no way to diagnose what's wrong - the sync just silently fails. Luckily, iCloud Photos Downloader bypasses Photos entirely and pulls directly from iCloud.