Mar 7, 2025

Migrating Google Photos to Guizhou Cloud iCloud Photos

🤖This article was translated by AI (LLM). There may be errors or inaccuracies. For the original content, please refer to the original version.

Recently, my girlfriend gifted me an iPhone, which led to this unconventional operation—probably something only tech-savvy users in mainland China would need to do.

For Google Photos to iCloud transfers in the US region, you can directly use Google Takeout for one-click migration.

Download All Google Photos

Follow the Google Photos Takeout Helper README to create a new export task.

Wait for the export completion email and open one to gather basic data for batch downloading using scripts.

File list:

Right-click to copy a download link:

https://takeout.google.com/takeout/download?j=1162e805-3b09-494c-ba99-6bb0bb7719b9&i=0&user=105433832262546547905

Install a browser extension that can export download tasks as command-line tools, such as cliget:

Obtain the command:

aria2c --header 'Host: takeout-download.usercontent.google.com' --user-agent ... 'https://takeout-download.usercontent.google.com/download/takeout-20250303T133330Z-001.zip?j=1162e805-3b09-494c-ba99-6bb0bb7719b9&i=0&user=779537051113&authuser=0' --out 'takeout-20250303T133330Z-001.zip'

Notice that the file index is controlled by the “&i=0&user=” parameter in the URL, where the first file corresponds to i=0.

Write a batch download script:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import subprocess
from pathlib import Path

command_template = r"aria2c --header 'Host: takeout-download.usercontent.google.com' --user-agent ...'https://takeout-download.usercontent.google.com/download/takeout-20250303T133330Z-011.zip?j=1162e805-3b09-494c-ba99-6bb0bb7719b9&i={{index}}&user=779537051113&authuser=0' --out 'takeout-20250303T133330Z-{{index}}.zip'"

for i in range(50):
    print(i)
    if Path(f"takeout-20250303T133330Z-{i}.zip").exists() and not Path(f"takeout-20250303T133330Z-{i}.zip.aria2").exists():
        print(f"takeout-20250303T133330Z-{i}.zip exists")
        continue
    url = f"https://accounts.google.com/AccountChooser?continue=https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout/download?j%3D1162e805-3b09-494c-ba99-6bb0bb7719b9%26i%3D{i}&[email protected]"
    # download to photos_{i}.zip
    command = command_template.replace("{{index}}", str(i))
    subprocess.run(command, shell=True)

After downloading multiple ZIP files, extract them (since these ZIPs are not stripped archives but individual compressed files):
```
for file in *.zip
    7z x "$file"
end
```

Use Google Photos Takeout Helper to process the files:

Fix timestamps:
```
gpth-linux --fix Takeout/
```

Convert:

gpth-linux --input Takeout/ --output photo/ --albums "shortcut"

Fix timestamps in the target folder:
```
gpth-linux --fix photo/
```

Import to iCloud Photos

Set up a macOS virtual machine for uploading photos. Third-party tools like rclone can upload to iCloud (though not Photos specifically), but they are slow—testing showed it could take up to 3 days.
- Follow ultimate-macOS-KVM.
- Install macOS (I chose OSX14) and allocate sufficient storage (I allocated 256GB). Log in with your China-region iCloud account.

Enable SSH: Allow a remote computer to access your Mac.

Edit the boot.sh VM startup script:

############## REMOVE THESE LINES AFTER MACOS INSTALLATION ###############
#-drive id=BaseSystem,if=none,file="$VM_PATH/BaseSystem.img",format=raw
#-device ide-hd,bus=sata.4,drive=BaseSystem
##########################################################################

-netdev user,id=net0,hostfwd=tcp::5555-:22 -device "$NETWORK_DEVICE",netdev=net0,id=net0,mac="$MAC_ADDRESS"
-device qxl-vga,vgamem_mb=128,vram_size_mb=128
-monitor stdio

Connect from the host machine:
```
ssh <your-name>@localhost -p 5555
```

Run a WebDAV server in the photo folder and forward the port to macOS:

```
rclone serve webdav --addr :8080 .
```

ssh -R 8080:127.0.0.1:8080 <your-name>@localhost -p 5555

Mount WebDAV in macOS: Mounting a Shared Folder Using WebDAV on Mac.
Use macOS Photos to import the images. Follow this method: Reddit r/applehelp.
Wait for the upload to complete. Testing showed that 150GB (~11k photos) took about a full day.
- Disable Mac power-saving to prevent upload pauses: Set sleep and wake settings for your Mac.
- Then, wait:

Conclusion

As geeks, we must investigate whether we have an exit strategy—meaning ways to export our data. Similarly, the Mac VM serves this purpose.

In summary, Apple is a great design company but also a terrible tech company.