Have you ever wanted direct access to your iCloud photo and video files? I use an iPhone and store all my photos and videos on iCloud. When working with the iCloud web app and Photos MacOs app, I found myself wondering — where are the actual files? Instead of navigating these applications, I want to see my photo and video files right in the Finder and access them directly.

It turns out you can update the settings in your Photos app to store original files on your Mac. From there, you can even grab the actual files. Here’s how you do it.

Download Original Photo and Video Files to your Mac

Open the Photos app, open up the app’s Settings, and click on the iCloud tab. Here you’ll want to select the “Download Originals to this Mac” option. This will make the original photo and video files from iCloud available on your Mac.

If you have a lot of photos and videos, it may take a while to download the originals on to your Mac. Keep in mind, storing original photo and video files will take up space on your computer. You might want to keep an eye on how much storage this takes up. To check your storage limits, head to System Settings > General > Storage.

Access the Original Photo and Video Files on your Mac

Open Finder on your Mac and make sure you’re in your user directory. If you’re not, open up the Settings for Finder and under “New Finder windows show” select your user directory. Now when you open the Finder, you should see directories like Applications, Movies, Music, and Pictures.

We’re looking for the Pictures directory. In the Pictures directory, right click on Photos Library.photoslibrary and select “Show Package Contents.” This will open the contents of the Photos Library package, where the Photos app stores your original media files. To get those originals, open the originals directory.

Here, you’ll see a bunch of folders named 0 through 9 and A through F. Inside those directories, are the original files for your photos and videos! Photos and videos will be distributed across these directories.

To find a specific file, you will have to go into each directory to look for it. I like to use the Date Created column to find files if I know around when the photo or video was taken. Not ideal, but there you have it! Direct access to your original iCloud photo and video files on your Mac 🌟💽.