iCloud Photos Downloader: Weekly Recap - Apple Auth Compatibility & Infrastructure Updates
The team addressed breaking changes in Apple's 2026 authentication flow with coordinated fixes across both CLI and WebUI interfaces. Infrastructure updates modernized build dependencies and CI runners.
Duration: PT2M15S
Transcript
Welcome to the iCloud Photos Downloader weekly recap for May 25th through June 1st, 2026.
Three pull requests merged and eight additional commits this week, centered on a critical compatibility issue with Apple's updated authentication system.
The dominant theme was restoring two-factor authentication functionality after Apple changed their auth flow in 2026. Pull request 1335 identified two specific problems: Apple now requires a PUT request to verify trusted device security codes instead of the previous POST approach, and phone number data moved to a new location in the authentication payload. The fix updated the push notification trigger and added fallback parsing for phone numbers when the original path returns empty results.
This wasn't a one-and-done solution. Pull request 1344 followed immediately to apply the same push notification fix to the WebUI code path, ensuring both CLI and web interfaces work with Apple's new requirements. The coordinated approach prevented users from experiencing different authentication behaviors depending on their interface choice.
Infrastructure modernization formed the second theme. Pull request 1345 updated GitHub Actions workflows from macOS 13 to macOS 14 runners after GitHub deprecated the older environment. Additional commits bumped Alpine Linux from version 3.18 to 3.23 and updated build dependencies for Python 3.13 compatibility, suggesting preparation for broader platform support.
The week concluded with a version bump to 1.32.3, packaging these authentication fixes and infrastructure updates into a release. The timing indicates urgency around the Apple compatibility issues, which makes sense given that broken two-factor authentication would block users from accessing their iCloud photos entirely.
Looking ahead, the authentication changes appear stable across both interfaces, and the infrastructure updates position the project for newer Python and macOS environments. Developers should expect the 1.32.3 release to resolve Apple auth issues that may have emerged recently.
That's your weekly recap for iCloud Photos Downloader.