How do I select ALL my photos on my icloud and download them onto a hardrive

[LonghaulLaura]

So, I have about 3000 photos on my icloud account that I have taken with my iphone. I have opened my icloud account and want to select them ALL and then download them onto an external hard drive attached to my computer - I want to make sure they are all backed up outside of the icloud.

I am doing my nut trying to select ALL the photos. I've been online and on YouTube but I can't find any of the icons they're referencing - some of the posts I'm reading are from 2016/17 - has something changed?

I can do it individually but I cannot do the usual 'select all/apple A/Cmd A' keyboard short cuts that allow me to highlight all the photos. Have just tried to access some help on the Apple forums but it is impenetrable and they are experiencing some 'technical difficulties'. I have just tried it on my MAC with no luck and now my partner and I are trying it on his Windows Laptop and it's still proving mystifying.

It shouldn't be this hard should it? It's quite a common procedure that should be easy to carry out.

Anyone got any ideas??

[widowerbutok]

Hi, sad to say Apple removed the facility to select all the photos in one go!!
The only way is to press Shift+ alt+ cmd and click on each photo individually!! If you click on a white space between the pics or double click on a photo by accident, your selection disappears> good aint it.

Then click on the Download symbol at the top and the selection will go into your download folder. From there you can select as many as you want to put into a flash drive etc there is no restriction on the number you can select in one go. Then once you have, delete them from your download folder.

Good luck

Suggest you have a trial first tho with a few. Then select them in batches.

Best of luck

[LonghaulLaura]

Really??!! Why on earth did they think it a good idea to remove such a useful function?! I really can’t comprehend it. It’s supposed to be good practice to back up everything in at least two/three locations - so one on your device one on an external hard drive and one in the cloud. Why make it so difficult? Do you know if there’s another cloud provider I could use that doesn’t have this ridiculous lack of functionality? I am going in to the Apple shop this week so I might ask them why. My I-phone SE has slowed right down now so I’m due an upgrade - perhaps it’s time to ditch my loyalty to Apple!

[LonghaulLaura]

Forgot to say thanks for your reply widowerbutok

[LonghaulLaura]

So I went to the "Genius" Bar and asked an expert about this. He had a go himself and gave up and couldn't work out a way. He logged me onto an Apple Feedback place and helped me write to them asking how I could do it and the methods we'd tried in the shop and I haven't heard a dicky bird. I have received two emails from them asking for customer feedback on their service so they do know how to get hold of me! How crap is that?

I'd gone in to pick up my broken laptop that was going to cost as much as a new one to fix. Might be time to wave goodbye to Apple. Now, I wonder how I get all the photos in my icloud onto another cloud provider - I bet they make that easy? Not!

[TodayImThisName]

I want to know this too. I couldn’t work out how to do it but thought it was me being thick. Please can you update if you find out. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

[widowerbutok]

Just a thought, if you have a Mac, click on Photos App, then click on Photos. Go to Edit and click on Select All, you will see they are all selected. Then go to File and click on Export. You are given two options, I tried the top one of export Xno. of photos. A box opens, just click on the Export option.
You can now decide where you want to hold the photos ie a usb.
Recommend you try this with one photo to understand the process, but this should be a mirror of the pics you hold in iCloud so 'should' work lol

Good luck