{"id":36307,"date":"2026-08-12T23:31:36","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T06:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/?p=36307"},"modified":"2026-08-12T23:31:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T06:31:36","slug":"apple-photos-archiving-for-posterity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podfeet.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/apple-photos-archiving-for-posterity\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple Photos \u2013 Making Your Memories Last with an Easy to Access Archive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last Christmas holidays, I saw a Toot on Mastodon from Rui Carmo<\/a> saying that Apple Photos had dreadful exporting and archiving features. He thought there was a better way and so wrote a Mac command line tool, using Swift, to address what he saw as the shortcomings.<\/p>\n

Reading the instructions on GitHub, it seems his primary concerns are around the filenames and the metadata. His tool writes each file using a timestamp for the name, and optionally outputs a JSON sidecar file with key metadata.<\/p>\n

While I did like the idea of the timestamp filenames, the rest of it seemed\u2026 overkill for my purposes. If you think it sounds like something you might want, check it out over on GitHub<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, listen on for how I had already been doing my own archiving. Mine is a little more involved, but for a periodic task, I don\u2019t find it so onerous.<\/p>\n

First, what is my problem to be solved? Put simply, my phone<\/em> photos live only in iCloud Photos. If that gets hosed, or if access is lost (and I am primarily thinking of when I\u2019m gone), then the photos are probably lost. For my DSLR photos, I have long had a rigorous, multi-layered archive process including \u201caccessible\u201d versions \u2014 small, medium quality JPEGs \u2014 of all photos. I wanted accessible versions of my iCloud Photos, too.<\/p>\n

The first thing I did was work out how to incrementally ring-fence the photos that were yet to be archived. This was achieved with a Smart Album, which meant it had to be done on the Mac. Realistically, I think however this task is done, it\u2019ll have to be on a Mac.<\/p>\n

I had specific requirements on what I wanted to be included. Or, more specifically, what should be excluded<\/em>. My Smart Album criteria say to match all the following:<\/p>\n