iCloud Photos Downloader: Security Key Sign-In and Retention Safety
Security-key sign-in shipped to unblock accounts with no trusted phone numbers, while new fixes target unsafe deletion in keep-recent mode, EXIF crashes, and time-zone handling. Three PRs merged on October 31st, with four safety and UI changes still open.
Duration: PT2M15S
Episode overview
This episode is a short developer briefing from iCloud Photos Downloader.
It explains recent repository work in plain language.
- Show: iCloud Photos Downloader
- Published: 2026-11-01T14:13:09Z
- Audio duration: PT2M15S
Transcript excerpt
This excerpt keeps the crawler page concise. Listen to the episode or use the RSS feed for the full update.
Good morning, it's Sunday, November first, 2026.
The headline this week is access and safety: security key accounts can now sign in, and a cluster of fixes closes paths that could delete or crash downloads.
First, authentication. PR 1423 fixes a full lockout reported in issue 583. Accounts using a security key list no trusted phone numbers, so no code is ever sent, and the trust step failed with an invalid session error. Now when the two-factor step finds no phone numbers, the client requests the authentication…
Second, retention safety. Two open fixes address the keep iCloud recent days mode. PR 1429 found assets with no creation date in iCloud defaulted to 1970, so they looked older than any retention window and were deleted. The fix tracks whether iCloud actually provided a date and keeps those assets. PR 1427 tackles a…
Finally, robustness and docs. PR 1432 stops malformed EXIF data from aborting a run with the set EXIF date time option by logging and skipping the file. PR 1424 standardizes the skip created filters on local time zone and repairs tests that only passed on UTC. Merged docs work in PR 1426 clarifies each download size…
What's next: the three safety fixes and an…
Nearby episodes from iCloud Photos Downloader
- 1.33 Release Focuses on Resilient Syncs
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- Weekly Recap - Unlocking Locked Accounts and Stopping Silent Deletes
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- Filename Safety and Auth Fixes
- Advanced Data Protection Support and Binary Reliability Fixes
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- Critical Trust Fix and Python 3.14 Move