iCloud Photos on Mac OS X

With the release of iOS 8.1 Apple has released two thirds of their new photo managing solution.

With iCloud Photo Library every photo you take with your iOS devices is now automatically synced to iCloud and available on every iOS device you own. You can edit, delete, favorite or organise these photos and the changes will sync across all devices.

They also added Photos as an iCloud.com application so you can view those same images in your webbrowser. The only part that’s currently missing is support for the Mac, which they promised will arrive early 2015.

As an intermediate solution I decided to use a favorite app of mine, Fluid, to build a viewer for the iCloud Photo Library. I won’t get organisation, editing or uploading. But what I do get is a convenient way to view and download any picture I’ve taken with my iOS devices right from my dock.

Setup

• Download Fluid.
• Download an icon for the app.
• Open Fluid and add the following base url: https://www.icloud.com/#photos. (It’s not live yet but will be soon, if you want to try it now, use https://beta.icloud.com/#photos)
• Give the app a good name, like Photos, or iCloud Photos.
• Select your icon.
• At first launch iCloud gives an error about not being compatible with your browser: go to Your app name > User Agent > and select Safari.
• Relaunch the app.
• Enter your iCloud credentials.
• Enjoy your photos! (the very first login took a minute or two for me)