Download & Backup

Download photos from Flickr to local storage using photos download.

Basic Usage

# Download specific photos by ID
flickr photos download 51234567890 51234567891 --dest ./my-photos

# Download all albums
flickr photos download --all --dest ./backup

# Download specific albums by title
flickr photos download --album "Vacation" --album "Family" --dest ./backup

# Download specific albums by ID
flickr photos download --album-id 72157712345678901 --dest ./backup

Key Flags

Flag	Default	Description
--dest	./flickr-backup	Destination directory
--album		Album title (repeatable)
--album-id		Album ID (repeatable)
--all	false	Include all albums
--size	original	Download size: original, large, medium, small
--metadata	json	Metadata format: json, yaml, both, none
--layout		Directory structure: flat, album, id-dirs
--force	false	Overwrite existing files

Directory Layouts

Flat layout

All photos in a single directory (default when downloading by photo ID):

flickr photos download --all --layout flat --dest ./backup

./backup/
  photo-1.jpg
  photo-1.jpg.json
  photo-2.jpg
  photo-3.jpg

Album layout (default when --all or --album)

Each album becomes a subdirectory:

./flickr-backup/
  Vacation/
    photo-1.jpg
    photo-1.jpg.json
    photo-2.jpg
  Family/
    photo-3.jpg

ID-dirs layout

Stable archive using Flickr photo IDs as directory names:

flickr photos download --all --layout id-dirs --dest ./archive

./archive/
  51234567890/
    51234567890.jpg
    51234567890.jpg.json
  51234567891/
    51234567891.jpg

Metadata Formats

Each downloaded photo gets a sidecar metadata file alongside the image.

json (default)

{
  "id": "51234567890",
  "title": "Sunset",
  "description": "A beautiful sunset",
  "tags": ["nature", "sunset"],
  "taken_date": "2025-06-15T18:30:00Z",
  "upload_date": "2025-06-16T10:00:00Z"
}

yaml

id: "51234567890"
title: Sunset
description: A beautiful sunset
tags:
  - nature
  - sunset
taken_date: "2025-06-15T18:30:00Z"

both

Writes both .json and .yaml sidecar files for each photo.

none

No sidecar metadata files.

Resume Support

By default, flickr-cli skips files that already exist in the destination directory. This allows interrupted downloads to be restarted without re-downloading completed files. Use --force to re-download existing files.

# Start a large download
flickr photos download --all --dest ./backup

# If interrupted (Ctrl-C or network failure), just re-run:
flickr photos download --all --dest ./backup

Dry Run

Preview what would be downloaded without writing files:

flickr photos download --all --dest ./backup --dry-run --json

JSON Output

flickr photos download --all --dest ./backup --json

Returns a summary with counts of downloaded, skipped, and failed files, plus the destination path.