Purpose

Beginning January 8, 2019, free accounts will be limited to 1,000 photos and videos. I am not ready to upgrade to pro account, so I have to find a way to download all my photos and videos before deadline. The official way provided by flickr doesn't work well if you have a large amount(e.g. >5000) photos/videos or a lot of albums to download. So I just wrote this small tool to help myself and maybe you as well.

Steps

1. Make sure having python(3.x) and git installed.

2. Install flickr python api package(use 'pip3' instead of 'pip' if you have both python2.x and python3.x installed and set python2.x as default).

   pip install flickr_api
   

   or

   python -m pip install flickr_api
   

3. Clone this repository

   git clone https://github.com/gallen/flickr-download
   

4. Get authorization code. Go to 'flickr-download' folder and run command below,

   python auth.py
   

   This will open a browser window and navigate to flickr authentication page. Login with your flickr account(if not logged in already) and authorize access.

   The script will ask you 'oauth_verifier', just copy the verifier code got from flickr authorize page above.

   This will create a file 'auth.txt' in same folder, this file contains the authorization code and will be used for next step.

5. Download your photos (Check Notes for vides first if you have videos to download also)! Run command below.

   python download.py
   

   Type your flickr account email address when the script asks. Downloading should start now. It will also save the progress, so it won't start over in case being interrupted for some reasons.

Notes for downloading videos.

The flickr python api doesn't support download videos. If you have videos in your albums, you'll need a little bit 'hacking'.

1. First you'll need get 'cookies' from flickr website with your own account.

2. Then open 'download.py' and locate this line

RAW_COOKIES = "=" # Replace '=' with your cookies

replace '=' with 'cookies' copied from previous step.

• If your video format is not '.mp4', you'll need change this line also,

VEDIO_FILE_EXT = ".mp4"