photo export

iCloud Photos has several limits, and they sit in different places: the web downloader, your storage plan, shared albums, Apple's data export, and the devices that hold your library. This guide lists each one with its source, explains how they interact, and covers the ways to work around them.

Downloading from the iCloud website

• You can download only 1,000 photos or videos at a time. If you have more, you repeat the download in batches^[1].
• You can choose between three versions of each file: the untouched original, the highest-quality version for your device, or the most compatible version (a regular JPEG or MP4 that opens anywhere)^[2].

Storage space

• Everyone gets 5 GB free, and that space is shared with your files, backups, and everything else on your account^[3].
• More space costs money. In the US that is $0.99 a month for 50 GB, $2.99 for 200 GB, $9.99 for 2 TB, $29.99 for 6 TB, and $59.99 for 12 TB. Other countries pay different prices^[4].

Asking Apple for a copy of everything

• You get your full library in original quality, but Apple splits it into several zip files of 1, 2, 5, 10, or 25 GB each, whichever you pick^[5].
• Apple says it can take up to seven days before the files are ready^[6].
• Once they are ready, you have 14 days to download them. After that Apple removes them and you have to ask again^[7].

Deleted photos

• A deleted photo stays in the Recently Deleted album for 30 days before Apple removes it for good. Until then it still uses up your storage^[8].

Shared albums (made on iOS 26 or earlier)

• An album can hold at most 5,000 photos and videos, counting everyone's contributions together^[9].
• You can share up to 200 albums, and up to 100 people can follow each one^[10].
• One person can add at most 1,000 photos and videos per hour and 10,000 per day across all shared albums^[11].
• Photos are shrunk to 2,048 pixels on the long side (panoramas up to 5,400 pixels), so they are lower quality than your originals^[12].
• Videos can be up to 15 minutes long and are shown at up to 720p^[13].

Apple's own instructions for downloading from iCloud.com say you can select up to 1,000 photos or videos at a time, on both iPhone/iPad and on a Mac or PC^[14]. Press Command+A (Control+A on Windows) and iCloud.com selects everything, but only up to 1,000 are downloaded as one zip^[15].

The arithmetic is what makes it painful. One user with 155,000 photos and videos asked whether he really had to do 155 separate downloads of 1,000 photos each^[16]. A top Apple Community contributor in the same thread confirmed there is no way to select more than 1,000, and said the Photos app hangs if you try^[17]. A test of Apple's redesigned iCloud.com at the time found the same limit^[18].

The cap applies to the web interface only. Photos on a Mac, the Photos app on iPhone and iPad, and iCloud for Windows do not use it^[19].

With Optimize Storage on, the original photos and videos stay in iCloud and your device keeps smaller versions^[20]. That is the setup most people have, and it means the Photos app on the Mac has no originals to export.

The 155,000-item thread is the clearest case. The originals came to about 400 GB, the user did not have that much local space, and the Mac's Photos library held only optimized copies^[21]. The one place with the originals was iCloud, and the one place that exposed them was the 1,000-per-batch web page.

A second problem shows up on top of the cap: the zip can contain fewer items than you selected. A user who selected 54 videos received 46, with no error^[22]. The Apple Community answer lists several causes^[23]:

• A video uploaded while Optimize Storage was active may exist in iCloud only as a placeholder that cannot be packaged.
• The server-side zip step can skip a file it cannot package at that moment, particularly around HEIC and HEVC processing.
• An edited photo and its original can both show in the selection but be packaged once.

This is a reason to compare the file count of every zip against your selection, and a reason to prefer methods that fetch items one at a time.

When you download from iCloud.com, Apple offers three versions^[24]:

• Unmodified Originals: the format as captured or imported.
• Highest Resolution: best quality for your device, typically HEIC or H.265.
• Most Compatible: JPEG or MP4/H.264.

If the goal is a backup or a move to another service, Unmodified Originals is the right choice. Most Compatible re-encodes the file.

iCloud gives you 5 GB free, and that 5 GB is shared by photos, files, backups, and everything else on the account^[25]. iCloud+ plans start at 50 GB. In the United States, Apple lists 50 GB at $0.99, 200 GB at $2.99, 2 TB at $9.99, 6 TB at $29.99, and 12 TB at $59.99 per month. Prices differ by country, and some regions add VAT^[26].

When iCloud Photos fills the plan, uploads stop. A common reaction is to delete photos to make room, which is where the next limit matters.

Items you delete move to Recently Deleted. Apple Community answers describe a 30-day window before they are removed from the iCloud server, and say you can delete them permanently sooner^[27]. Until then they still hold storage. If you are deleting to get under a quota, empty Recently Deleted as well.

The rules changed with iOS 27. For shared albums created in iOS, iPadOS, macOS 27 or later, photos and videos are stored at full resolution and count toward the owner's iCloud storage, including what other participants add^[28]. Apple removed the per-album caps for these albums beyond the owner's available storage, and kept a limit of 100 participants^[29]. Temporary shared albums do not count toward storage and are limited to 5,000 items^[30]. MacRumors reports that items in a temporary album that are not saved to a library are deleted after 30 days^[31].

Existing shared albums keep the older rules by default, and Photos offers an Upgrade Shared Album option that moves them to the new model at the cost of storage^[32].

Older shared albums don't count toward your storage, but they have caps and they reduce quality^[33]:

• 5,000 photos and videos per album, combined across all contributors.
• 200 shared albums an owner can share, and 200 a user can subscribe to.
• 100 subscribers per album.
• 1,000 photos and videos per contributor per hour, and 10,000 per day, across all shared albums.
• 200 comments or likes per photo or video, and 1,024 characters per comment.
• 200 invites per day for an album owner.
• Photos are reduced to 2,048 pixels on the long edge (panoramas up to 5,400 pixels wide), GIFs must be 100 MB or smaller, and videos are limited to 15 minutes at up to 720p.

Apple also warns that when you copy photos out of a shared album, they may not save at full resolution, and comments and likes are not saved^[34]. If a shared album is the only copy of a photo, save the original from its owner.

Apple gives you several ways to get a full copy, and each has a ceiling.

In Photos > Settings > iCloud, choose Download Originals to this Mac. After the sync finishes, select everything in the Library and use File > Export > Export Unmodified Originals^[35][36].

• You need free disk space for the entire library, which is why people on small internal drives get stuck.
• Depending on library size it can take overnight or several days, and the Mac should stay plugged in and on Wi-Fi. Low Power Mode pauses iCloud Photos sync^[37].
• A Live Photo is exported as two files, a still and a video^[38].
• You can export IPTC metadata and keywords as an XMP sidecar file^[39].

Set Photos to Download and Keep Originals, then use Share > Export Unmodified Originals and save to an external drive^[40][41]. The Photos app on iPhone has no select-everything shortcut, so large libraries are slow to select by hand^[42].

On a PC with iCloud for Windows, iCloud Photos appear in File Explorer, where you can copy files out^[43]. The "Always keep on this device" option saves them offline^[44].

At privacy.apple.com you can request a copy of your data, choose iCloud Photos, and pick a maximum file size of 1, 2, 5, 10, or 25 GB. Whatever you pick, you receive all the data; the size only sets how it is split^[45]. This is the one way to get your whole library out in full resolution without selecting anything, and Apple Community answers recommend it for archiving large libraries^[46]. It comes with four limits:

• It takes days to prepare. Apple says it fulfills requests within seven days, and for a large library you should expect to use them^[47][48].
• It arrives as several zip files. A library over 200 GB came back as six chunks that the user then had to move and reassemble^[49].
• The download links expire. After Apple tells you the data is ready you have 14 days to download it. Miss that window and the data is removed from your Data and Privacy page, and you have to request it again and wait again^[50].
• It is a one-time snapshot. Photos added after you submit the request are not in it, so a later copy needs a new request.

Two smaller caveats: the option is not offered in every country or region^[51], and Apple's privacy team can ask for extra identity verification before it fulfills the request^[52]. Smaller file sizes are easier to resume if a download fails partway^[53].

Photos is one of the categories end-to-end encrypted when you turn on Advanced Data Protection (ADP). With ADP on, access to your data through iCloud.com is disabled by default, and you must switch on data access on iCloud.com in your Apple account settings to use the web downloader^[54]. Third-party tools that sign in through the web, including rclone and Blober, depend on the same setting^[55].

Shared Albums do not support ADP: the keys for shared album content are uploaded to Apple, so it is not end-to-end encrypted even if ADP is on^[56].

Method	Beats the 1,000 cap	Originals	No manual selection	Needs local disk for the whole library	Writes to iCloud Photos
iCloud.com batch download	No	Yes (choose Unmodified Originals)	No	No, one batch at a time	No
Photos on Mac, Download Originals	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	n/a
Photos on iPhone, Export Unmodified Originals	Yes	Yes	Partly	Yes	n/a
iCloud for Windows	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes unless streamed	n/a
Apple Data & Privacy request	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes for the chunks	No
rclone (iclouddrive backend)	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No (Photos is read-only)
Blober	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes

rclone's iCloud backend reads Photos through the web service, so the 1,000-item selection does not apply. Its documentation says iCloud Photos is read-only: upload, delete, rename, and move are not supported^[57]. Setup uses your Apple ID password plus a 2FA code, app-specific passwords are not accepted, and the trust token lasts 30 days before you must reconnect^[58]. It presents Photos as libraries with albums nested inside, and notes that the first listing of a very large album (its example is 75,000 items) can take several minutes because of API pagination limits^[59].

Blober signs in on Apple's own page, keeps the validated session, and reads iCloud Photos through the same service iCloud.com uses. It does not build a selection-and-zip download, so the 1,000-per-batch rule of the web page is not part of the flow. The adapter pages the timeline using Apple's own continuation marker and requests each photo's original file individually.

What that gives you:

• Original files. The adapter reads each item's original resource, not a preview or a re-encoded JPEG.
• No zip to come back short. Items transfer one at a time, so a missing or unreadable item fails or skips on its own and the rest continue.
• No waiting period and no expiring links. There is no request to submit and no archive for Apple to build, so you do not wait up to seven days or race a 14-day download window. Transfers start when you run them and read the library as it is at that moment.
• No local staging. The destination can be a local folder, an external drive, a NAS, or another provider such as S3, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2, Wasabi, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, pCloud, Proton Drive, or GoPro Cloud, so a 400 GB library does not need 400 GB of free space on your Mac.
• No ADP workaround required beyond the Apple setting. It works with Advanced Data Protection as long as Access iCloud Data on the Web is on.
• Upload as well as download. Blober can write into iCloud Photos and keeps the capture date, which rclone cannot do^[60].

Setup and the full capability list are on the iCloud provider page, and the broader write-up is in iCloud Drive and iCloud Photos: How to Transfer Files In and Out.

• Albums and favorites. iCloud Photos is listed as one timeline, newest first. Albums, favorites, and folder views are not available, so an export does not recreate your albums.
• Hidden and recently deleted items. The Photos feed Blober reads excludes hidden and deleted items, so they are not part of a transfer. Move hidden items back to the main library first if you want them included.
• Storage plan. Blober does not raise your 5 GB or paid quota. If the account is full, Apple refuses the upload and Blober reports it as a storage problem.
• Deletion is immediate. Deleting a photo through Blober flags it deleted and expunged at once, which is different from Apple's 30-day Recently Deleted window. Verify your copy before deleting from iCloud.
• Camera RAW into Photos. Uploads of dng, cr2, arw, nef, orf, and raf into iCloud Photos are skipped, because iCloud Photos refuses them. Downloading existing items is unaffected.
• China (GCBD) accounts are not supported.
• Sessions expire. You sign in again with one click, and a transfer resumes where it left off.
• Apple's speed. Removing the selection cap does not make Apple's servers faster. A very large library still takes real time.
• Shared album rules. Items in shared albums follow Apple's quality reductions and caps above. Blober cannot restore resolution that Apple removed.

What is the iCloud Photos download limit? On iCloud.com you can select and download up to 1,000 photos or videos at a time^[61].

Is the 1,000-photo limit the same on iPhone, Mac, and Windows? The limit is on iCloud.com. Apple's instructions give the 1,000 figure for iCloud.com on an iPhone or iPad and for iCloud.com on a Mac or PC^[62]. The Photos app on Mac and iCloud for Windows sync the library without that selection step^[63].

How do I download more than 1,000 photos from iCloud at once? Use Photos on a Mac with Download Originals to this Mac, iCloud for Windows, a data request at privacy.apple.com, rclone, or Blober^[64][65].

Can I select all photos on iCloud.com? You can press Command+A or Control+A, but only up to 1,000 are downloaded in the zip^[66].

How many photos can I download from iCloud? There is no cap on your total. The cap is per batch on iCloud.com, so a library of any size can be downloaded by repeating batches or by using another method.

Why did my iCloud download have fewer photos than I selected? Common causes are placeholders for items uploaded under Optimize Storage, files the zip step could not package, and edited photos that count twice in the selection but pack once^[67].

How long does it take to download from iCloud? It depends on library size and connection. Apple's data request can take up to seven days for a large library^[68], and syncing originals to a Mac can take overnight or days^[69].

How do I download all iCloud photos to an external hard drive? On a Mac, set Download Originals to this Mac, then export unmodified originals to the drive^[70]. On iPhone, use Export Unmodified Originals and save to the drive^[71]. If the originals will not fit on your Mac, a tool that streams them directly to the drive, such as Blober, avoids the local copy.

Does iCloud have a limit on how many photos I can store? Apple documents storage in gigabytes, not photo counts. The plan limit is 5 GB free, then 50 GB, 200 GB, 2 TB, 6 TB, or 12 TB^[72].

How much does more iCloud storage cost? In the United States, 50 GB is $0.99, 200 GB is $2.99, 2 TB is $9.99, 6 TB is $29.99, and 12 TB is $59.99 per month. Other countries differ^[73].

Do shared albums count against my iCloud storage? Albums created in iOS 27 or later do, including what other people add. Older shared albums do not^[74].

What is the maximum number of photos in a shared album? 5,000 for albums created in iOS 26 or earlier. Albums created in iOS 27 or later have no item cap beyond the owner's storage^[75].

How many people can join a shared album? 100 subscribers on older albums, and 100 participants including the owner on new ones^[76].

Are shared album photos full resolution? Not on older albums: photos are reduced to 2,048 pixels on the long edge and videos to 720p. Albums created in iOS 27 or later store originals at full resolution^[77].

Does a data request at privacy.apple.com get around the limit? Yes, and it gives you full-resolution originals. You choose iCloud Photos and a file size from 1 GB to 25 GB, and Apple prepares the files. It can take up to seven days, it arrives as several zip files, and the download links expire 14 days after it is ready, after which you must request it again^[78][79].

How long do Apple's iCloud Photos export links last? 14 days from the moment Apple notifies you that the data is ready^[80].

How long are deleted iCloud photos kept? Apple Community answers describe 30 days in Recently Deleted before removal from the iCloud server^[81].

Does Advanced Data Protection stop me downloading from iCloud.com? It disables web access by default, but you can turn data access on iCloud.com back on in your Apple account settings^[82].

Does Blober need my Apple ID password? No. You sign in on Apple's own page and Blober uses only the validated session. rclone, by contrast, needs your Apple ID password and 2FA code^[83].

Does Blober download originals or reduced copies? Originals. The adapter reads each item's original file resource.

Will my albums survive a Blober download? No. Blober lists iCloud Photos as a single timeline, so album structure is not recreated. Apple's own Photos app export gives you more structure options.

Can Blober transfer iCloud Photos straight to another cloud? Yes. Choose any supported provider as the destination and each item is streamed there without staging the whole library on your disk.

• iCloud Drive and iCloud Photos: How to Transfer Files In and Out - how the integration works and how it compares to rclone
• iCloud Drive and iCloud Photos Setup - sign-in steps and the full capability list
• How to Backup Google Photos Without Google Takeout - the same problem on the Google side
• Transferring GoPro Footage to iCloud Drive on a Mac - sending camera media into iCloud

Blober downloads your iCloud Photos library at original quality, with no 1,000-item selection, straight to a local drive, NAS, or another cloud. No subscription, no per-GB fees.

Download Blober at blober.io