Reclaim Reclaim.

Your photos, safely off a full iCloud

When iCloud fills up, the usual advice is to pay for more storage or start deleting and hope you picked the right ones. This is the third option: your photos are copied out, every copy is checked against the original, and you download them to your own computer. Only once you have them are you asked whether to free up the space.

What usually goes wrong

Deleting from your phone is quick and irreversible, and there is no good way to tell which of thirty thousand photos you will miss. Most people put it off, pay for another tier, and put it off again. The ones who do clear space usually do it by hand, at speed, on a small screen.

How it works

  1. You sign inOn a link sent just to you. Your Apple password is used once to connect and is never written down on our side.
  2. We look at what is thereHow many photos and videos, how old, what formats, how much space they take.
  3. You choose what movesKeep the last three months, or twelve, or everything. Narrow it further by kind, format or size if you want to.
  4. Everything is copied and checkedEach photo is copied, then checked against the original before it counts as saved. Nothing is removed during this step.
  5. You download themThe copies come to your own computer, with a checksum list so your machine can confirm every file arrived complete.
  6. You decide about the spaceOnly after you confirm you have the files. Nothing leaves iCloud until then.
Nothing is removed until the files are yours A photo can only be removed from iCloud once a copy has been verified against the original and you have confirmed the files are on your own computer. Anything that fails the check stays in iCloud, and you get a record listing every file and its result.
We do not keep your photos Our server holds them only while you collect them. Once you confirm they are on your computer, our copy is deleted. If you never collect them, our copy is deleted after seven days and nothing is removed from your iCloud, so nothing is lost either way.

What we cannot do

Only the date decides what moves Over this connection we cannot see which of your photos are marked as favourites, are inside an album, or have people in them. Those are treated like any other photo of the same age. If that matters to you, say so before we start and we will set the window accordingly.

Removed photos go to Recently Deleted on your device, where they stay recoverable for thirty days. The space is not actually freed until that empties, which you can do straight away or leave to clear on its own.

What you end up with

Space back in iCloud, your photos on your own computer, and a dated record of what was copied, what was checked and what was removed. If a photo could not be verified, it is on that record too, still in iCloud.

Getting started

Reclaim is run as a service rather than sold as an app. Get in touch and you will be sent a private link to begin.

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