How to download orginal photos from iCloud Photo Library to PC?
- Go to https://www.icloud.com/#photos.
- Go to Albums -- All Photos folder.
- Click Select Photos on top-right of the page.
- Select first photo and Shift-select last photo.
- You should see all photos are selected now.
- Click Download in top-middle menu.
I downloaded the icloud manager app: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204283.
Then in bottom right control panel on Windows (where the printer, volume, and wifi icons are located) clicked on the icloud icon then download photos then you can select ALL or by year.
This method doesn't prompt a thousand save as windows like doing it via icloud.com does.
You can, by going to iCloud.com/#photos. Once there:
- Click 'Select Photos' to go into selection mode
- Select a photo
- Shift-click another photo, to select the range between the first selection and your last selection (just like in Windows/OS X, you can use Shift or Cmd/Ctrl to choose exactly what you like).
- Click 'Download' at the top blue bar.
The best I've seen is that you can download a "moment" at a time with the iCloud web interface, which in Chrome on a PC as of 9/23/2015, downloads a pile of individual images named "IMG_XXXX.JPG" to your downloads folder. Tedious, but at least it's not as slow as downloading individual files.
I'm thinking of running a Hackintosh virtual machine on my home PC just for the purpose running the OS X Photos app and maintaining an archive of full-resolution images while enjoying the seamless synchronization and low-resolution local storage of images on my iPhone. This is a key part of the "Apple ecosystem" that is denied to PC users that really annoys me.
iCloud for Windows from Apple allows you to download photos from iCloud Photo Library by year.
Set up and use iCloud Photo Library on your Windows PC:
New photos and videos you add to iCloud Photo Library will automatically download to your PC. You can also download your collection by year when you follow these steps:
- Open a File Explorer window.
- Under Favorites, click iCloud Photos.
- Click Download Photos.
- Choose the photos and videos you want to download and click Download.
- Your photos and videos download to the location you set in iCloud Photos Options.