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cathrynF38 Author

Level 1

5 points

Dowloading photos off the icloud onto a MAC with a different Icloud account

Hi. I am hoping someone can help me. I am desperate.

I have an iphone 7, and all my photos are in Icloud. I can not turn icloud photos off, as I have 9000 photos that will then be deleted as I do not have enough storage on my phone.

The problem is this, I need to download these photos that are in the cloud onto our MAC. However, the Mac's Icloud address is not the same as my icloud address. If I try to log into my icloud account, I cant (it says try again later- I have tried thousands of times on various days). I also cant seem to add an icloud address to my MAC. And every site explaining how to download my photos from the cloud to my MAC requires me to do so by logging into my icloud account.

When connecting my phone to the MAC via USB and opening the photos app - up until a year ago - the Iphone always automatically downloaded all the photos onto the MAC. (all photos not downloaded would show up as not imported, and then one could import them) Now this does not happen at all. According to photos there are "no new photos to import" although there are probably 3000 photos that need to be downloaded??

PLease advise how I am going to download these photos from my icloud account?

THank you

iPhone 7, iOS 12

Posted on Jun 22, 2019 9:39 AM

Top-ranking reply

Eric Root

Level 10

684,615 points

Posted on Jun 22, 2019 12:56 PM

Are the photos on the phone full resolution photos? Try attaching the phone to the computer and see if the application Image Capture can see/transfer the photos.

If you can't sign into iCloud in your normal user account, do you have another user account you can log into and sign into iCloud in that account? See if you can download the photos in another account. You will need to set up the Photos application for iCloud syncing in the new account. You can also try attaching the phone by USB while in that account.

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Dowloading photos off the icloud onto a MAC with a different Icloud account

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