Other Please help me figure out how to transfer all of my deceased father's iCloud/iPhone photos to PC hard drive (while preserving file names and dates)

[beerseagulls]

my father had the iPhone 12 Pro. He passed away recently.

I have his iCloud password and the first thing I did was put the iPhone in totally unlocked status.

according to the iPhone setting menu, his iCloud storage contains about 20gb of photos. In Photos, it shows a little over 5,000 photos.

I tried copying the photos from iCloud.com, but it only allowed selecting several hundred photos at a time.... which was fine... but the problem was that the copied photos end up with non-sequential image file names.... and the dates were all changed to the date that I was making the copy.

Is there a way to transfer all 20gb of photos from iCloud to a PC hard drive(exFat) while preserving all the original image file names and dates?

Thank you so much for your help.

 

[lkalliance]

Do you have a Mac with Photos on it? I would create an account on that Mac (if it doesn't already exist) with the iCloud credentials, and turn on iCloud Photo Library, with Optimize Photo Library turned OFF for the Mac. This would be step 1: getting the photos onto the Mac; Photos should keep them in the same order that they exist in iCloud.

Then I would export them, one year at a time, from Photos, using either Export or Export Unmodified Originals at your discretion. Photos will give you the opportunity to define a filename prefix, which would precede the photo number of the export. For example if I were exporting 100 photos this way, and I defined the Sequential Prefix to be "Photo Export - ", then the filenames of the exported photos would be "Photo Export - 1", "Photo Export - 2", "Photo Export - 3", etc. up to "Photo Export - 100".

(I don't know, but it may number them 001, 002, 003 because in the example I had 100 of them, I don't remember.)

But here's the thing: I don't know if doing it this way preserves the order of the photos. I don't know if photo 1 is the first one in the date-sorted Photos library, or if it is the earliest original file date or earliest alpha-sorted original filename. You'll have to do a test and find out. And I'm afraid I don't know what the Windows version of this would be, if you don't have a Mac. And there may be other issues with what I've just outlined here, it's just an idea to try if you can.

I hope this helps!

 

[jet16]

My wife passed away in 2020 and I had to figure out how to get all of her photos to a place I could have permanent access. I did have her ipad and phone access. This was before you could setup a legacy contact that apple recently added. I found the best solution for me was to download google photos app onto her ipad. I logged into google photos with my account and it asked if I wanted to backup the current icloud photo to google photos. I said yes, decided to do full resolution downloads, and it took off adding all of my wifes photos and videos from iclouds to my google photos. I did have to do a storage upgrade as she had a LOT of photos (Need to go in and trim some of that).

I have found that it did preserve the photo meta data when I did that backup.

The other solution could be to use the new apple legacy (might be the wrong name) option. Since you have access to the account you might be able to go in on his device and set yourself up the person to get control when he passes away. Then, you will always have access to the photos with out having to keep those phones/pads around?

 

[eyoungren]

My wife passed away in 2020 and I had to figure out how to get all of her photos to a place I could have permanent access. I did have her ipad and phone access. This was before you could setup a legacy contact that apple recently added. I found the best solution for me was to download google photos app onto her ipad. I logged into google photos with my account and it asked if I wanted to backup the current icloud photo to google photos. I said yes, decided to do full resolution downloads, and it took off adding all of my wifes photos and videos from iclouds to my google photos. I did have to do a storage upgrade as she had a LOT of photos (Need to go in and trim some of that).

I have found that it did preserve the photo meta data when I did that backup.

The other solution could be to use the new apple legacy (might be the wrong name) option. Since you have access to the account you might be able to go in on his device and set yourself up the person to get control when he passes away. Then, you will always have access to the photos with out having to keep those phones/pads around?

I was going to suggest Dropbox and Google Photos, but you covered Google Photos.

In both cases, there's a folder that is automatically created on your PC/Mac and a Camera Uploads folder in the case of Dropbox. Dropbox simply uploads, it doesn't mess with filenames.

But 2GB is Dropbox's free limit, so OP would probably have to pay for a tier of storage. But once Dropbox (or Google Photos) is done, all the photos would be on the hard drive (in the Dropbox/Google Photos folder) with the names as they were.

 

[IngoX]

Assuming you have a Windows PC? Use iCloud for windows. It's easier than downloading via iCloud.com. You might consider doing it in a separate windows user account so you don't mix it up with your own photo workflow.

Set up iCloud for Windows on your PC

Learn how to sign in to iCloud for Windows and turn features on and off.

support.apple.com

Set up and use iCloud Photos on your Windows PC - Apple Support

iCloud Photos safely stores all your photos and videos in iCloud, so they're available on all your devices. Learn how to get started with iCloud Photos on your Windows PC.

support.apple.com

 

[beerseagulls]

Assuming you have a Windows PC? Use iCloud for windows. It's easier than downloading via iCloud.com. You might consider doing it in a separate windows user account so you don't mix it up with your own photo workflow.

Set up iCloud for Windows on your PC

Learn how to sign in to iCloud for Windows and turn features on and off.

support.apple.com

Set up and use iCloud Photos on your Windows PC - Apple Support

iCloud Photos safely stores all your photos and videos in iCloud, so they're available on all your devices. Learn how to get started with iCloud Photos on your Windows PC.

support.apple.com

Thanks!

I did end up using iCloud for Windows on a fresh Windows laptop. 99% of the photos/videos were copied without issues. (strangely about a dozen of photos refused to be copied from iCloud to anything else.... but they were unimportant photos, so I just ignored those)

 

[max2]

Thanks I was trying to figure this out too!