March 2018, Andreas Bentele

This is a headless program (with command line interface) to export all photos of the macOS Photos library to a filesystem folder. Like Apple's Time Machine, it backup's the data in folders containing full backups, while using hard links to minimize disk usage.

Apr 03, 2019 But the macOS Photos Library has it's very special database structure - it's in parts file system based, but not intended to open it with any other program but Apple's Photos. Time Machine does nothing else but backup this database to an external disk. Backups are not portable to another system but a Mac with Photos. Dec 11, 2018 Photos are some of the most important files people want to keep safe. Storing them in the cloud is nice, but you might also want the peace of mind of having your pictures stored locally. Luckily, it’s easy enough to copy your Mac’s Photos library to an external drive. Nov 23, 2016 Connect the new drive and quit the Photos program before you copy the library. Next, go to your Mac’s Home folder and open the Pictures folder. Drag the PhotosLibrary.photoslibrary file to the new drive’s desktop icon (or onto its icon in the window’s sidebar). If you hold down the Command key while you drag. Ensure that the Apple Photos Library you want to migrate is set as the Systems Photos Library. To set your library as the Systems Photos Library, follow these steps: Open Apple Photos and select Preferences in the menu bar. Currently only the keyframe is migrated. If you want all the Burst photos to.

Assuming you have already copied your Photos library onto the external storage device, you can follow these steps. Open Photos on your Mac. Click Photos Preferences. Click on the iCloud tab.

You may ask: why another backup solution in addition to Time Machine, which already backups my Photos library?The answer is: Time Machine is one of the best backup solutions I know. But the macOS Photos Library has it's very special database structure - it's in parts file system based, but not intended to open it with any other program but Apple's Photos. Time Machine does nothing else but backup this database to an external disk. Backups are not portable to another system but a Mac with Photos.

Mac Photos Export Entire Library

Using Time Machine to backup my photos is what I've done for many years till I lost some of the most important photos in my Photos library (maybe by own mistake). Because of Time Machine automatically removes old backups to get new disk space, the photos were also deleted from my backups. Fortunately I found the photos in a backup of my old Aperture library. This opened my eyes, so I decided to implement a small program which implements the following requirements, partly inspired by how Time Machine works:

export all original and modified photos
generate a human readable folder structure containing all folders, albums, smart albums, moments, etc. from the Photos library (usable with any other program on any platform)
full exports: each export creates a new folder named after the current date
make use of hard links whenever possible instead of copying files, to minimize additional disk usage e.g. due to consecutive full backups or photos contained in several albums
never delete old backups (I want to be able to decide which old backups should be deleted, or if I want to buy a disk with more space for my backups)
performance and robustness: the backup of my around 30.000 photos should be done in less than an hour (currently it takes around 30 minutes); if it doesn't succeed, the program should at least let me know the error
keep it simple: no complex interface to configure things, no complex configuration
provide two export modes: 1. Time Machine like backup, 2. snapshot export with no extra disk usage if export is on same file system

There are two possible general use cases:

SnapshotPhotosExporter: export all your photos, e.g. to share them with other programs or devices like your TV or other non-Apple devices, share them in the cloud etc.; if the export folder is on the same file system as the Photos Library, there is no extra disk usage
IncrementalPhotosExporter: backup all your photos while keeping the previous backups, like with Time Machine (I would suggest to add a cron job to trigger it daily or weekly)

You also can combine both: export to local disk using SnapshotPhotosExporter. Make a backup using Time Machine to an external disk. Then use the IncrementalPhotosExporter to export the photos to the same external disk while using hard links to the already exported photos in the Time Machine backup instead of copying all photos again (see parameter baseExportPath for more details).

I believe some other people who think backups are very important could make use of it as well, so I've decided to make the code open source. Any feedback is appreciated, especially pull requests with improvements.

This program was not my first try. I've tried out some other solutions before, that didn't work at all:

export photos within the Photos app; this didn't work because of several annoying bugs of Photos (I've already reported the bugs to Apple). Also the export in Photos doesn't fulfill the requirements discussed above.
searched for another existing external solution including scripts, Objective-C or Swift based programs posted in the WWW; there were no real existing solutions but only some discussions on the same topic which showed me that this was not only a problem of me
then I've written a script using the Applescript language which automates the Photos app and calls shell scripts to do the file system based things; while the script was rather expressive and short, it had very bad performance and bad robustness because of annoying bugs in the Photos app and Apple's scripting architecture as well. Also the Photos API was rather limited at the time I used it.

The final step was to re-implement everything using Apple's latest programming language Swift and the MediaLibrary Framework. The result is a very robust, performant and maintainable solution compared to the previous solutions.

Currently the program doesn't have any arguments and no user interface.You have checkout the project, open it in Xcode, open MainExporter.swift and modify the parameters, most important targetPath. Be sure the target path is on a file system which supports hard links. You are free to customize the code to your needs, but it's not required.

Then run the program with Xcode, or compile the project and use the executable to export your photos.

Normally, the exporter adds the timestamp of a photo to the exported photo's filename. Use the keyword 'export-no-date' in Photos to omit the timestamp in the filename.

If you move the exported folder, be sure to recreate the Latest link, because it would be broken after moving the folders.

Parameters of the exporter

All parameters can be applied both to the SnapshotPhotosExporter and to IncrementalPhotosExporter.

exportMediaGroupFilter: filter for the media groups (default: all media groups are exported)
exportPhotosOfMediaGroupFilter: filter for photos in a media group (default: all media groups are exported)
exportMediaObjectFilter: filter for media objects (default: all media objects are exported)
exportCalculated: set to false if calculated photos should not be exported (default: true)
exportOriginals: set to false if calculated photos should not be exported (default: true)
baseExportPath (only IncrementalPhotosExporter, optional parameter): the path to an already existing export folder on the same device; example: export all photos using SnapshotPhotosExporter to your local disk or SSD; create a backup using Time Machine; additionally export the photos using IncrementalPhotosExporter to the same device as your Time Machine backup. Then you would set the baseExportPath to the export folder within your Time Machine backup, to link the exported photos with the photos of your Time Machine backup to save disk space.
deleteFlatPath (only SnapshotPhotosExporter, optional parameter

Mac Photos Library Export