Photos don't get deleted, even with --delete-after-download

[dojoca]

Overview

I've run "sudo icloudpd -u "[email protected]" -p "your-password" -d '/your/download/path' --delete-after-download"
I have previously authenticated.

The output is this:
[sudo] password for server:
2024-12-27 12:19:08 DEBUG Authenticating...
2024-12-27 12:19:11 DEBUG Looking up all photos and videos from album All Photos...
2024-12-27 12:19:12 INFO Downloading 24740 original photos and videos to /your/download/path ...
2024-12-27 12:19:15 DEBUG Downloading /your/download/path/2024/10/20/IMG_0247.HEIC...
2024-12-27 12:19:16 INFO Downloaded /your/download/path/2024/10/20/IMG_0247.HEIC
2024-12-27 12:19:16 DEBUG Deleting IMG_0247.HEIC in iCloud...
2024-12-27 12:19:16 DEBUG POST https://icloud-database-url {"atomic": true, "desiredKeys": ["isDeleted"], "operations": [{"operationType": "update", "record": {"fields": {"isDeleted": {"value": 1}}, "recordChangeTag": "2qj5", "recordName": "record-unique-id", "recordType": "CPLAsset"}}], "zoneID": {"zoneName": "PrimarySync", "ownerRecordName": "owner-unique-id", "zoneType": "REGULAR_CUSTOM_ZONE"}}
2024-12-27 12:19:17 DEBUG {'Server': 'AppleHttpServer', 'Date': 'Fri, 27 Dec 2024 04:19:17 GMT', 'Content-Type': 'application/json; charset=UTF-8', 'Transfer-Encoding': 'chunked', 'Connection': 'keep-alive', 'X-Responding-Instance': 'instance-details', 'Set-Cookie': 'X-APPLE-WEBAUTH-TOKEN=...;Secure;HttpOnly', 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin': 'https://www.icloud.com', 'Access-Control-Allow-Credentials': 'true', 'Timing-Allow-Origin': 'https://www.icloud.com', 'X-Apple-CloudKit-Version': '1.0', 'Content-Encoding': 'gzip', 'Strict-Transport-Security': 'max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains;', 'x-apple-user-partition': '175', 'via': 'cloud-details', 'X-Apple-Request-UUID': 'request-uuid', 'access-control-expose-headers': 'X-Apple-Request-UUID,X-Responding-Instance,Via', 'X-Apple-Edge-Response-Time': '496'}
2024-12-27 12:19:17 DEBUG {'records': [{'recordName': 'record-unique-id', 'recordType': 'CPLAsset', 'fields': {'isDeleted': {'value': 1, 'type': 'INT64'}}, 'pluginFields': {}, 'recordChangeTag': '2zqp', 'created': {'timestamp': 1733362900758, 'userRecordName': 'user-unique-id', 'deviceID': 'device-id'}, 'modified': {'timestamp': 1735273156947, 'userRecordName': 'user-unique-id', 'deviceID': 'device-id'}, 'deleted': False, 'expirationTime': 1738729156}], 'syncToken': 'sync-token'}
2024-12-27 12:19:17 INFO Deleted IMG_0247.HEIC in iCloud
2024-12-27 12:19:17 DEBUG Downloading /your/download/path/2024/10/20/IMG_0246.HEIC...
0%| | 1/24740 [00:05<34:30:53, 5.02s/it]

I then hit CTRL+C (since the error above showed up) and get this:

Aborted!
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/bin/icloudpd", line 5, in
from icloudpd import main
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/icloudpd/main.py", line 5, in
sys.exit(subprocess.call([os.path.join(os.path.dirname(file), "icloudpd"), *sys.argv[1:]]))
File "/usr/lib/python3.10/subprocess.py", line 347, in call
return p.wait(timeout=timeout)
File "/usr/lib/python3.10/subprocess.py", line 1209, in wait
return self._wait(timeout=timeout)
File "/usr/lib/python3.10/subprocess.py", line 1959, in _wait
(pid, sts) = self._try_wait(0)
File "/usr/lib/python3.10/subprocess.py", line 1917, in _try_wait
(pid, sts) = os.waitpid(self.pid, wait_flags)
KeyboardInterrupt

Steps to Reproduce

1. sudo icloudpd -u "[email protected]" -p "your-password" -d '/your/download/path' --delete-after-download

Expected Behavior

It should download then delete the photos from iCloud.

Actual Behavior

The error above happens, photos don't get downloaded then deleted.

Context

It's a pain in the bum to manually delete photos from iCloud.

Also - just to be clear, I have tried this with iCloud in the normal (syncing) mode and in the "photos will be deleted in 30 days" mode.

No idea why this isn't working?

[AndreyNikiforov]

What version of icloudpd are you using and where did you obtain it? Debugging requests in your output seems not matching parameters.

[dojoca]

Hi Andrey - thanks for the quick reply and seasons greetings :)

This is the --version information:
version:1.25.0, commit sha:96f9451, commit timestamp:Wed Dec 4 01:01:43 2024 AWST

as far as I am aware, I've installed icloudpd from this github.

[dojoca]

Just realised - is it possible the debugging request on my output isn't working because I ran it through chatGPT to remove identifying information?

[AndreyNikiforov]

Just realised - is it possible the debugging request on my output isn't working because I ran it through chatGPT to remove identifying information?

The strange part for me was that your log shows 2024-12-27 12:19:16 DEBUG POST... - that should not be displayed unless extra logging is enabled. I tested latest version and it indeed shows log for deleting request - something to clean up.

I tried to reproduce your issue on my test account and image was successfully deleted in iCloud after downloading - icloudpd behaved as expected on my account.