How to export your data from Apple

Requesting the GDPR export, what arrives, and how to open it.

medium Wait: up to 7 days (Apple emails you when it is ready)

Apple is required to give you a copy of the data it holds about you, including photos, videos, purchase history and files. The request itself is free, and arrives as one or more .zip files, split into chunks you choose (1-25 GB each). Typical wait: up to 7 days (Apple emails you when it is ready).

Apple Data & Privacy portal

Step by step

  1. Sign in at privacy.apple.com

    Use the same Apple ID whose data you want. This is the official GDPR / data-portability portal, separate from iCloud.

  2. Choose "Get a copy of your data"

    Then "Get started" under Obtain a copy of your data.

  3. Select what to include

    Tick the categories you want. iCloud Photos is the large one, and it is listed separately from the account information - your sign-in records, purchases and app history are their own entries and are small by comparison. If you only want the photographs, take only that; if this is a once-and-for-all copy, take everything, since the wait is the same.

  4. Pick a maximum file size

    Apple splits the export into chunks and lets you choose how big they are, from 1 GB up to 25 GB. Pick the largest your disk and your connection will tolerate: a 20 GB library at the 5 GB setting arrives as four files, and at 1 GB as twenty. Fewer, larger files means fewer downloads to shepherd and fewer chances for one to fail partway.

  5. Submit and wait

    Apple verifies the request and prepares the export, which takes up to seven days - the longest wait of any of the big services. There is no progress to watch and no way to hurry it. Make the request before you need it rather than the evening you have set aside to sort your photographs.

  6. Download every part

    Download all the numbered parts and keep them in one folder. The links expire after a few days; let them lapse and the whole seven-day wait starts again. Do not unzip them - Muletto reads the archives directly, which saves both the time and the doubled disk space.

  7. Open the parts together

    Drop every part into Muletto at once. It reads them as one export, decodes the HEIC without converting anything, puts the dates and locations back into the files themselves, and finds the photographs that also exist in your Google or Snapchat archives. If you want ordinary JPEGs at the end, there is a box for that when you save.

Opening your Apple export

Muletto reads an Apple export directly - the zip, without unpacking it first - and finds the photos, videos and purchase history inside.

It runs in the browser: the archive is never uploaded, there is no account, and nothing is installed. Open several exports at once and they become one library, with the photographs that appear in more than one of them found automatically.

What this export does not contain, which catches nearly everybody: no passwords. Those are end-to-end encrypted in iCloud, so Apple holds them as blobs it has no key for. Health is less clear-cut and worth knowing about: Apple's own support pages say health data can come as part of a data request, but a real eighteen-archive export requested in July 2026 arrived with none in it. Tick it if it is offered, and get it off the phone as well - that takes a minute and definitely works. Health comes off the iPhone instead, in about a minute - there is a separate Apple Health guide here for it. Photographs are a different case: not secret, just large, so they are their own item to select rather than part of the account archives. And if you have Advanced Data Protection switched on, the encrypted set grows to around twenty-three categories, so your export gets smaller rather than larger.

Open your Apple export

Worth knowing

What this export does not contain, which catches nearly everybody: no passwords. Those are end-to-end encrypted in iCloud, so Apple holds them as blobs it has no key for. Health is less clear-cut and worth knowing about: Apple's own support pages say health data can come as part of a data request, but a real eighteen-archive export requested in July 2026 arrived with none in it. Tick it if it is offered, and get it off the phone as well - that takes a minute and definitely works. Health comes off the iPhone instead, in about a minute - there is a separate Apple Health guide here for it. Photographs are a different case: not secret, just large, so they are their own item to select rather than part of the account archives. And if you have Advanced Data Protection switched on, the encrypted set grows to around twenty-three categories, so your export gets smaller rather than larger.
This export gives you full-resolution originals, not the compressed previews some sync tools leave behind.
Download links expire after a few days, so save every part promptly.
A large library arrives as several multi-gigabyte files. Keep them together in one folder and open them together.
Apple also offers a separate service that transfers your iCloud Photos collection directly to another provider. That is a different thing from this export: it moves your library to another company rather than giving you a copy of your own.
HEIC files keep working after Muletto writes dates and locations back, and export as they came unless you ask for JPEG on the way out - one box on the save screen, converted here rather than uploaded anywhere, at roughly double the file size.

Common questions

Why did Apple send me eighteen separate zip files?

Apple sends one archive per category, and splits anything larger than the size limit you picked when requesting. Several of those archives contain further zip files inside them, so a single category can be two levels deep.

How long does an Apple data request take?

Apple says up to seven days and it is often less. Once ready, the download stays available for about two weeks, after which the request has to be made again.

Why are there no photos in my Apple privacy export?

iCloud Photos is a separate category and has to be selected when the request is made. If it was included it arrives as its own set of archives, which for a large library can be very big.

What is inside the Apple Media Services archive?

Purchase history, App Store activity, Apple Music listening and Game Center data. It holds further zip files rather than plain spreadsheets, so anything that unpacks only one level will appear to find almost nothing in it.