Upload

Upload local photos to Flickr.

Basic Usage

flickr photos upload ./photo.jpg

Upload one or more files or directories:

flickr photos upload file1.jpg file2.jpg
flickr photos upload ./photos/

Flags

Flag	Default	Description
--recursive	false	Recurse into subdirectories
--description		Description applied to all uploaded files
--tag		User tag (repeatable)
--tags		Tags as CSV string
--album		Album name (repeatable; created automatically if absent)
--album-id		Existing album ID (repeatable)
--privacy		Privacy: public, private, friends, family, friends-family
--safety		Safety level: safe, moderate, restricted
--content-type		Content type: photo, screenshot, other
--hidden		Hidden from public searches: public, hidden
--dedupe	checksum	Deduplication mode: none, checksum
--hash	md5	Hash algorithm: md5, sha1
--move-after		Move files to this directory after successful upload
--accepted-ext		Accepted file extensions (repeatable)

Recursive Upload

Use --recursive to upload all images in a directory tree:

flickr photos upload ./photos/ --recursive --album "All Photos"

Albums

Albums specified with --album are created automatically if they do not exist. Use --album-id to add to existing albums by ID.

flickr photos upload ./trip/ --album "Summer Trip" --album "2025"

Privacy and Safety

flickr photos upload ./docs/ --privacy private --safety restricted --hidden hidden

Deduplication

By default, flickr-cli computes a checksum (MD5) of each file before uploading and checks whether a photo with the same checksum already exists on Flickr via machine tags. Duplicate files are skipped.

# Default: checksum-based dedup with MD5
flickr photos upload ./photos/ --dedupe checksum --hash md5

# Disable deduplication
flickr photos upload ./photos/ --dedupe none

How It Works

1. Before uploading, compute the hash of the local file.
2. Search Flickr for a photo with a matching checksum:md5=... machine tag.
3. If found, skip the upload and report the existing photo ID.
4. If not found, upload the file and tag it with the checksum.

Move After Upload

Move successfully uploaded files to a different directory:

flickr photos upload ./inbox/ --recursive --move-after ./uploaded/

This is useful for processing an inbox of files without re-uploading on the next run.

JSON Output

flickr photos upload ./photo.jpg --json

Returns the uploaded photo ID and status for each file:

{
  "ok": true,
  "data": {
    "uploaded": [
      { "file": "photo.jpg", "photo_id": "51234567890", "status": "uploaded" }
    ],
    "skipped": [],
    "failed": [],
    "total": 1
  }
}

Safety Gates

photos upload is a medium-risk mutation. It does not require --confirm.

• --read-only blocks the upload (exit code 6).
• --dry-run shows planned uploads without executing them.
• --confirm is not required for uploads (only needed for high-risk operations like photos delete and albums delete).

See Safety for the full risk classification of all commands.