iCloudPy

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iCloudPy is a simple iCloud webservices wrapper library written in Python. It is a major reuse of pyiCloud python library.

iCloudPy connects to iCloud using your username and password, stores the session locally and then performs various queries to iCloud server.

iCloudPy requires Python 3.14 or newer.

Authentication

Authentication without using a saved password is as simple as passing your username and password to the ICloudPyService class:

from icloudpy import ICloudPyService

api = ICloudPyService("jappleseed@apple.com", "password")
# For China region
api = ICloudPyService(
    "jappleseed@apple.com",
    "password",
    home_endpoint="https://www.icloud.com.cn",
    setup_endpoint="https://setup.icloud.com.cn/setup/ws/1",
)

In the event that the username/password combination is invalid, a ICloudPyFailedLoginException exception is thrown.

You can also store your password in the system keyring using the command-line tool:

> icloud --username=jappleseed@apple.com
ICloud Password for jappleseed@apple.com:
Save password in keyring? (y/N)
# For China region
> icloud --username=jappleseed@apple.com --region=china
ICloud Password for jappleseed@apple.com:
Save password in keyring? (y/N)

If you have stored a password in the keyring, you will not be required to provide a password when interacting with the command-line tool or instantiating the ICloudPyService class for the username you stored the password for.

api = ICloudPyService("jappleseed@apple.com")

If you would like to delete a password stored in your system keyring, you can clear a stored password using the --delete-from-keyring command-line option:

> icloud --username=jappleseed@apple.com --delete-from-keyring

Note: Authentication will expire after an interval set by Apple, at which point you will have to re-authenticate. This interval is currently two months.

Two-step and two-factor authentication (2SA/2FA)

If you have enabled two-factor authentications (2FA) or two-step authentication (2SA) for the account you will have to do some extra work:

import sys

if api.requires_2fa:
    if api.security_key_challenge:
        # This Apple ID has hardware security keys enrolled, so Apple issues a
        # WebAuthn challenge instead of a 6-digit code. See the next section.
        if not api.confirm_security_key():
            print("Security key verification failed")
            sys.exit(1)
    else:
        print("Two-factor authentication required.")
        code = input("Enter the code you received on one of your approved devices: ")
        result = api.validate_2fa_code(code)
        print("Code validation result: %s" % result)

        if not result:
            print("Failed to verify security code")
            sys.exit(1)

        if not api.is_trusted_session:
            print("Session is not trusted. Requesting trust...")
            result = api.trust_session()
            print("Session trust result %s" % result)

            if not result:
                print("Failed to request trust. You will likely be prompted for the code again in the coming weeks")
elif api.requires_2sa:
    import click

    print("Two-step authentication required. Your trusted devices are:")

    devices = api.trusted_devices
    for i, device in enumerate(devices):
        print("  %s: %s" % (i, device.get("deviceName", "SMS to %s" % device.get("phoneNumber"))))

    device = click.prompt("Which device would you like to use?", default=0)
    device = devices[device]
    if not api.send_verification_code(device):
        print("Failed to send verification code")
        sys.exit(1)

    code = click.prompt("Please enter validation code")
    if not api.validate_verification_code(device, code):
        print("Failed to verify verification code")
        sys.exit(1)

Hardware security keys

If the Apple ID has security keys enrolled, Apple stops sending 6-digit codes entirely and returns a WebAuthn challenge instead -- so validate_2fa_code() has nothing to validate. iCloudPy can sign that challenge with an attached FIDO2 security key (YubiKey and friends):

> pip install "icloudpy[security-key]"
# which simply pulls in the optional dependency; equivalently:
> pip install fido2

The fido2 package is optional: it is only imported when a challenge is signed locally, so code that never handles security-key accounts does not need it.

from icloudpy import ICloudPyService

api = ICloudPyService("jappleseed@apple.com", "password")

if api.requires_2fa:
    if api.security_key_challenge:
        if not api.confirm_security_key():  # touch the key when it flashes
            print("Security key verification failed")
            sys.exit(1)
    else:
        code = input("Enter the code you received on one of your approved devices: ")
        api.validate_2fa_code(code)

API reference:

api.security_key_challenge -- the pending challenge as a dict carrying challenge, keyHandles, rpId (and requestId), or None when Apple is not asking for a key. Reading it never requires the fido2 package.
api.confirm_security_key(assertion=None, device=None) -- fetches the challenge, signs it with device (or the first attached key) and submits it. Pass a pre-built assertion to submit one signed elsewhere -- then no device or fido2 package is needed. Returns True once the session no longer requires a second factor; raises ICloudPyFailedLoginException if Apple is not requesting a key or no FIDO2 device is found.
api.fido2_devices -- attached FIDO2 devices; empty when the fido2 package is not installed.
api.sign_security_key_challenge(challenge, device) -- signs without submitting, returning the assertion payload that confirm_security_key() accepts. Requires fido2 and a physical touch on the key.
icloudpy.base.build_security_key_assertion(response, rp_id, request_id=None) -- converts a WebAuthn AuthenticatorAssertionResponse (e.g. one produced by a browser) into the payload Apple expects, for callers that sign the challenge outside of iCloudPy.

Note: the icloud command-line tool does not support security-key accounts yet -- it only prompts for a 6-digit code. Use the library API above.

Devices

You can list which devices associated with your account by using the devices property:

>>> api.devices
{
u'i9vbKRGIcLYqJnXMd1b257kUWnoyEBcEh6yM+IfmiMLh7BmOpALS+w==': <AppleDevice(iPhone 4S: Johnny Appleseed's iPhone)>,
u'reGYDh9XwqNWTGIhNBuEwP1ds0F/Lg5t/fxNbI4V939hhXawByErk+HYVNSUzmWV': <AppleDevice(MacBook Air 11": Johnny Appleseed's MacBook Air)>
}

and you can access individual devices by either their index, or their ID:

>>> api.devices[0]
<AppleDevice(iPhone 4S: Johnny Appleseed's iPhone)>
>>> api.devices['i9vbKRGIcLYqJnXMd1b257kUWnoyEBcEh6yM+IfmiMLh7BmOpALS+w==']
<AppleDevice(iPhone 4S: Johnny Appleseed's iPhone)>

or, as a shorthand if you have only one associated apple device, you can simply use the iphone property to access the first device associated with your account:

>>> api.iphone
<AppleDevice(iPhone 4S: Johnny Appleseed's iPhone)>

Note: the first device associated with your account may not necessarily be your iPhone.

Find My iPhone

Once you have successfully authenticated, you can start querying your data!

Location

Returns the device's last known location. The Find My iPhone app must have been installed and initialized.

>>> api.iphone.location()
{u'timeStamp': 1357753796553, u'locationFinished': True, u'longitude': -0.14189, u'positionType': u'GPS', u'locationType': None, u'latitude': 51.501364, u'isOld': False, u'horizontalAccuracy': 5.0}

Status

The Find My iPhone response is quite bloated, so for simplicity's sake this method will return a subset of the properties.

>>> api.iphone.status()
{'deviceDisplayName': u'iPhone 5', 'deviceStatus': u'200', 'batteryLevel': 0.6166913, 'name': u"Peter's iPhone"}

If you wish to request further properties, you may do so by passing in a list of property names.

Play Sound

Sends a request to the device to play a sound, if you wish pass a custom message you can do so by changing the subject arg.

>>> api.iphone.play_sound()

A few moments later, the device will play a ringtone, display the default notification ("Find My iPhone Alert") and a confirmation email will be sent to you.

Lost Mode

Lost mode is slightly different to the "Play Sound" functionality in that it allows the person who picks up the phone to call a specific phone number without having to enter the passcode. Just like "Play Sound" you may pass a custom message which the device will display, if it's not overridden the custom message of "This iPhone has been lost. Please call me." is used.

>>> phone_number = '555-373-383'
>>> message = 'Thief! Return my phone immediately.'
>>> api.iphone.lost_device(phone_number, message)

Calendar

The calendar webservice currently only supports fetching events.

Events

Returns this month's events:

>>> api.calendar.events()

Or, between a specific date range:

>>> from_dt = datetime(2012, 1, 1)
>>> to_dt = datetime(2012, 1, 31)
>>> api.calendar.events(from_dt, to_dt)

Alternatively, you may fetch a single event's details, like so:

>>> api.calendar.get_event_detail('CALENDAR', 'EVENT_ID')

Contacts

You can access your iCloud contacts/address book through the contacts property:

>>> for c in api.contacts.all():
>>> print c.get('firstName'), c.get('phones')
John [{u'field': u'+1 555-55-5555-5', u'label': u'MOBILE'}]

Note: These contacts do not include contacts federated from e.g. Facebook, only the ones stored in iCloud.

File Storage (iCloud Drive)

You can access your iCloud Drive through the api.drive property:

>>> api.drive.dir()
['Holiday Photos', 'Work Files']
>>> api.drive['Holiday Photos']['2013']['Sicily'].dir()
['DSC08116.JPG', 'DSC08117.JPG']

>>> drive_file = api.drive['Holiday Photos']['2013']['Sicily']['DSC08116.JPG']
>>> drive_file.name
u'DSC08116.JPG'
>>> drive_file.date_modified
datetime.datetime(2013, 3, 21, 12, 28, 12) # NB this is UTC
>>> drive_file.size
2021698
>>> drive_file.type
u'file'

The open method will return a response object from which you can read the file's contents:

>>> from shutil import copyfileobj
>>> with drive_file.open(stream=True) as response:
>>>     with open(drive_file.name, 'wb') as file_out:
>>>         copyfileobj(response.raw, file_out)

open forwards its keyword arguments to the underlying requests calls. In particular, pass timeout (in seconds, or a (connect, read) pair) to bound both requests a download makes -- the by_id metadata lookup and the data transfer -- so a stalled download cannot hang its thread forever:

>>> with drive_file.open(stream=True, timeout=30) as response:
>>>     with open(drive_file.name, 'wb') as file_out:
>>>         copyfileobj(response.raw, file_out)

stream applies to the transfer only: the lookup is a small JSON reply that is read in full.

Recently Opened Documents

get_recent_docs lists the documents Apple shows under Recent in iCloud Drive, newest first (20 per page by default):

>>> recent = api.drive.get_recent_docs()
>>> [doc.name for doc in recent]
['Quarterly summary.pdf', 'Budget draft.numbers']
>>> recent[0].date_last_open
datetime.datetime(2020, 5, 3, 7, 24, 25) # NB this is UTC

The result is a plain list of drive nodes, so everything above applies to it, including open.

The listing covers the main Drive zone (com.apple.CloudDocs) by default. Pass zone to list a different one: get_recent_docs(zone="_all_") asks for every Drive zone, though Apple does not serve that for every account. Pass the same zone on each page request.

Apple caps the listing. When more documents exist the result says so, and the cursor it returns continues the listing:

>>> recent = api.drive.get_recent_docs(limit=10)
>>> recent.more_available
True
>>> while recent.more_available and recent.next_page:
>>>     recent = api.drive.get_recent_docs(limit=10, next_page=recent.next_page)
>>>     print([doc.name for doc in recent])

status carries Apple's raw value (CONSISTENT or MORE_AVAILABLE) if you would rather react to the truncation yourself. Each call returns one page; pages are not merged or de-duplicated. The loop above checks next_page as well as the status so a truncated page without a cursor cannot re-request the first page forever.

To interact with files and directions the mkdir, rename and delete functions are available for a file or folder:

>>> api.drive['Holiday Photos'].mkdir('2020')
>>> api.drive['Holiday Photos']['2020'].rename('2020_copy')
>>> api.drive['Holiday Photos']['2020_copy'].delete()

The upload method can be used to send a file-like object to the iCloud Drive:

>>> with open('Vacation.jpeg', 'rb') as file_in:
>>>>    api.drive['Holiday Photos'].upload(file_in)

It is strongly suggested to open file handles as binary rather than text to prevent decoding errors further down the line.

Accessing App Data

The get_app_node method can be used to retrieve a node with app data (that is not shown in api.drive.dir()). This is where the individual apps store related documents.

>>> node = api.drive.get_app_node("XXXXXXXXXX.com.apple.iMovie")

Ids of individual app data can be found in ~/Library/Mobile Documents (can only be accessed in Terminal). ~ must be replaced with ..

Node can then be used just like any other node, supporting mkdir, rename, delete and so on:

>>> node.mkdir('2020')
>>> node.rename('2020_copy')
>>> node.delete()

Photo Library

You can access the iCloud Photo Library through the photos property.

>>> api.photos.all
<PhotoAlbum: 'All Photos'>

Individual albums are available through the albums property:

>>> api.photos.albums['Screenshots']
<PhotoAlbum: 'Screenshots'>

Which you can iterate to access the photo assets. The 'All Photos' album is sorted by added_date so the most recently added photos are returned first. All other albums are sorted by asset_date (which represents the exif date) :

>>> for photo in api.photos.albums['Screenshots']:
        print photo, photo.filename
<PhotoAsset: id=AVbLPCGkp798nTb9KZozCXtO7jds> IMG_6045.JPG

To download a photo use the download method, which will return a response object, initialized with stream set to True, so you can read from the raw response object:

>>> photo = next(iter(api.photos.albums['Screenshots']), None)
>>> download = photo.download()
>>> with open(photo.filename, 'wb') as opened_file:
        opened_file.write(download.raw.read())

Note: Consider using shutil.copyfile or another buffered strategy for downloading the file so that the whole file isn't read into memory before writing.

Information about each version can be accessed through the versions property:

>>> photo.versions.keys()
[u'medium', u'original', u'thumb']

Edited photos also expose Apple's rendered edit (crop, filters, portrait effects, ...) as the full version. It is a JPEG rendition of the current view, not the untouched original, so it appears only for photos that have been edited:

>>> photo.versions['full']['type']
u'public.jpeg'

To download a specific version of the photo asset, pass the version to download():

>>> download = photo.download('thumb')
>>> with open(photo.versions['thumb']['filename'], 'wb') as thumb_file:
        thumb_file.write(download.raw.read())

Libraries

api.photos is the primary library. Every photo library the account owns -- the primary library and any shared library it created -- is available through the libraries property, keyed by zone name. Libraries shared with you live in CloudKit's shared database rather than the private one this enumerates, so they are not listed yet (#115).

>>> sorted(api.photos.libraries)
['PrimarySync']
>>> api.photos.libraries['PrimarySync'].all
<PhotoAlbum: 'All Photos'>

libraries is built on first access and cached on the service. Enumeration skips zones Apple rejects outright (400 Index has invalid data, ZONE_NOT_FOUND) and non-photo CMM-* zones, logging a warning rather than failing the call; a failed zones/list raises instead of returning an empty dict. library.zone_readable() probes a single zone: False only when Apple definitively rejects it, True otherwise, with transient errors propagating rather than being read as "unusable".

One library that cannot be read

A library Apple rejects cannot be listed by anyone, and without isolation it would fail every other library's sync too. libraries leaves those zones out, so a consumer that iterates it simply never sees them. When a zone-scoped query is rejected outright, it raises ICloudPyLibraryUnavailableException -- a subclass of ICloudPyAPIResponseException carrying zone_name -- so a caller can skip that library and carry on:

from icloudpy.exceptions import ICloudPyLibraryUnavailableException

for name, library in api.photos.libraries.items():
    try:
        for photo in library.all:
            ...
    except ICloudPyLibraryUnavailableException as err:
        # Apple rejected this zone mid-walk; skip it, keep the others.
        print(f"skipping {err.zone_name or name}: {err}")

Both types remain subclasses of ICloudPyAPIResponseException, so existing handlers keep working. Note that ZONE_NOT_FOUND now raises ICloudPyLibraryUnavailableException rather than ICloudPyServiceNotActivatedException -- including for the primary library (api.photos) -- so a handler catching the older type specifically no longer sees it.

This is not the same thing as a library that is still indexing: an unfinished index raises ICloudPyServiceNotActivatedException, and by default one unfinished library still fails the whole libraries call. Pass photos_require_finished_index=False (see below) to open it anyway.

Deleting a photo

PhotoAsset.delete() addresses the asset's own library's zone, exposed as zone_id, so an asset from a shared library is deleted there rather than in the primary library:

>>> photo.zone_id
{'zoneName': 'PrimarySync'}
>>> photo.delete()

While Apple is still indexing

Opening a library raises ICloudPyServiceNotActivatedException until Apple reports it has finished indexing it. Apple can report a library as indexing for a long time while still listing it, so you can open it anyway and check how far the index got:

>>> api = ICloudPyService('jappleseed@apple.com', 'password', photos_require_finished_index=False)
>>> api.photos.indexing_state
'RUNNING'
>>> {name: library.indexing_state for name, library in api.photos.libraries.items()}
{'PrimarySync': 'RUNNING'}

Until a library reads FINISHED, its listings may be incomplete. Don't treat a photo missing from one as deleted. The option is read when api.photos is first opened, so set it when you create the service. Each indexing_state is what Apple reported at that moment and isn't refreshed; create a new service to check again.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
.devcontainer		.devcontainer
.github		.github
.vscode		.vscode
icloudpy		icloudpy
tests		tests
.gitignore		.gitignore
.pre-commit-config.yaml		.pre-commit-config.yaml
.ruff.toml		.ruff.toml
.yamllint		.yamllint
AGENTS.md		AGENTS.md
CHANGELOG.md		CHANGELOG.md
Coveragerc		Coveragerc
LICENSE		LICENSE
MANIFEST.in		MANIFEST.in
README.md		README.md
generate_badges.py		generate_badges.py
pylintrc		pylintrc
pytest.ini		pytest.ini
requirements-test.txt		requirements-test.txt
requirements.txt		requirements.txt
run-ci.sh		run-ci.sh
run-in-env.sh		run-in-env.sh
setup.py		setup.py

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iCloudPy

Authentication

Two-step and two-factor authentication (2SA/2FA)

Hardware security keys

Devices

Find My iPhone

Location

Status

Play Sound

Lost Mode

Calendar

Events

Contacts

File Storage (iCloud Drive)

Recently Opened Documents

Accessing App Data

Photo Library

Libraries

One library that cannot be read

Deleting a photo

While Apple is still indexing

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iCloudPy

Authentication

Two-step and two-factor authentication (2SA/2FA)

Hardware security keys

Devices

Find My iPhone

Location

Status

Play Sound

Lost Mode

Calendar

Events

Contacts

File Storage (iCloud Drive)

Recently Opened Documents

Accessing App Data

Photo Library

Libraries

One library that cannot be read

Deleting a photo

While Apple is still indexing

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