How to Transfer 100,000 Photos from iCloud to Windows PC?
Hey everyone,
I’m currently dealing with a bit of a storage nightmare — I have around 100,000 photos (yes, I know, it’s a lot 😭 but they’ve accumulated over the years) stored in iCloud and on my iPhone.
The thing is, I’m about to get a new iPhone soon, and I really don’t want to clutter it with 90GB of old photos. Instead, I’d like to start clean with “0” photos on the new device.
My goal is to automatically sync all the photos from iCloud to my Windows PC, and then delete them from both iCloud and my iPhone without having to manually drag and drop 100,000 photos and delete them one by one.
Does anyone know of a smooth, automated process to make this happen? I want to ensure everything is backed up before clearing out iCloud and my phone.
Thanks in advance for any advice!
Edit - my solution:
Hey Guys, thank you for your advices!
So, my solution looks like this:
- Download iCloud for Windows
- Enable iCloud Photos and sync all photos
- Important! Enable “Always keep on this device” in File Explorer for iCloud Photos
- Once everything is downloaded, copy the photos to a folder not managed by iCloud
- On the iPhone, go to Settings > iCloud Account > iCloud > Storage > iCloud Photos > “Turn off and delete photos”
- It will take 30 days for iCloud to be deleted, during which time you can make sure everything is backed up
The „Google“ solution from @mokajojo sounds good too and i think i‘ll use it as a seccond backup!