How to move lots of photos from iCloud to hard drive?

The easiest way to download all your photos at once is to use a Mac or PC. On a Mac, sign into iCloud, open the Photos app, and enable “Download Originals to This Mac.” This downloads your entire library automatically, and you can copy it to your hard drive. On Windows, install iCloud for Windows and enable “Download Originals.” You can also use iCloud.com and press Ctrl+A to select all items at once.

azaksalmarzur28 wrote: … You can also use iCloud.com and press Ctrl+A to select all items at once.

Unfortunately, this doesn't really work like that. Photos at iCloud.com has a download limit of 1000 items, so "Ctrl+A to select all items at once" produces an error message. So if you do the direct download from iCloud.com, you will need to do 1000 items at a time.

Using a Mac, is by far the easiest way to backup Photos, but I'm guessing you don't have one. But if you do, and if you don't have enough space on the Mac's internal drive, here is a way to backup up Photos to an external drive even though you're forced to use Optimize Storage on your Mac:

Backup iCloud Photos with an Optimized Mac - Apple Community

Another option is to go to https://privacy.apple.com/ and check "iCloud Photos" to request all your pictures. It may be a couple of weeks before you get an email that says you have your data waiting for download.

You receive a giant zip file in your email. zip is a compression system, but so is jpg, so the pictures are already as compressed as they'll get. Then the zip file will be about the same size as your library data base--that is, big. I haven't done this for pictures, but lots have. It seems to me that some email systems might balk at the attachment, but I haven't heard that as a problem. You can have them send a hundred 1GB files, apparently.

[Edited by Moderator]

Richard.Taylor wrote: You receive a giant zip file in your email.

Drat-- I tried to fix this from my poor memory, but it didn't work. What is you get an email links to a site where you can get all those downloads-- the files don't arrive in the email, itself.