To help you get started, we've collected the most common ways that pyicloud is being used within popular public projects.

pyiCloud

PyiCloud is a module which allows pythonistas to interact with iCloud webservices. It's powered by the fantastic requests HTTP library.

At its core, PyiCloud connects to iCloud using your username and password, then performs calendar and iPhone queries against their API.

Authentication

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

from pyicloud import PyiCloudService
api = PyiCloudService('jappleseed@apple.com', 'password')

In the event that the username/password combination is invalid, a PyiCloudFailedLoginException 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)

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 PyiCloudService class for the username you stored the password for.

api = PyiCloudService('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:

if api.requires_2fa:
    print("Two-factor authentication required.")
    code = input("Enter the code you received of 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)

Devices

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

>>> api.devices
{
'i9vbKRGIcLYqJnXMd1b257kUWnoyEBcEh6yM+IfmiMLh7BmOpALS+w==': ,
'reGYDh9XwqNWTGIhNBuEwP1ds0F/Lg5t/fxNbI4V939hhXawByErk+HYVNSUzmWV': 
}

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

>>> api.devices[0]

>>> api.devices['i9vbKRGIcLYqJnXMd1b257kUWnoyEBcEh6yM+IfmiMLh7BmOpALS+w==']

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

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()
{'timeStamp': 1357753796553, 'locationFinished': True, 'longitude': -0.14189, 'positionType': 'GPS', 'locationType': None, 'latitude': 51.501364, 'isOld': False, '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': 'iPhone 5', 'deviceStatus': '200', 'batteryLevel': 0.6166913, 'name': "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 [{'field': '+1 555-55-5555-5', 'label': 'MOBILE'}]

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

File Storage (Ubiquity)

You can access documents stored in your iCloud account by using the files property's dir method:

>>> api.files.dir()
['.do-not-delete',
 '.localized',
 'com~apple~Notes',
 'com~apple~Preview',
 'com~apple~mail',
 'com~apple~shoebox',
 'com~apple~system~spotlight'
]

You can access children and their children's children using the filename as an index:

>>> api.files['com~apple~Notes']

>>> api.files['com~apple~Notes'].type
'folder'
>>> api.files['com~apple~Notes'].dir()
['Documents']
>>> api.files['com~apple~Notes']['Documents'].dir()
['Some Document']
>>> api.files['com~apple~Notes']['Documents']['Some Document'].name
'Some Document'
>>> api.files['com~apple~Notes']['Documents']['Some Document'].modified
datetime.datetime(2012, 9, 13, 2, 26, 17)
>>> api.files['com~apple~Notes']['Documents']['Some Document'].size
1308134
>>> api.files['com~apple~Notes']['Documents']['Some Document'].type
'file'

And when you have a file that you'd like to download, the open method will return a response object from which you can read the content.

>>> api.files['com~apple~Notes']['Documents']['Some Document'].open().content
'Hello, these are the file contents'

Note: the object returned from the above open method is a response object and the open method can accept any parameters you might normally use in a request using requests.

For example, if you know that the file you're opening has JSON content:

>>> api.files['com~apple~Notes']['Documents']['information.json'].open().json()
{'How much we love you': 'lots'}
>>> api.files['com~apple~Notes']['Documents']['information.json'].open().json()['How much we love you']
'lots'

Or, if you're downloading a particularly large file, you may want to use the stream keyword argument, and read directly from the raw response object:

>>> download = api.files['com~apple~Notes']['Documents']['big_file.zip'].open(stream=True)
>>> with open('downloaded_file.zip', 'wb') as opened_file:
        opened_file.write(download.raw.read())

File Storage (iCloud Drive)

You can access your iCloud Drive using an API identical to the Ubiquity one described in the previous section, except that it is rooted at `api.drive`:

>>> 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
'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
'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)

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.

Photo Library

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

>>> api.photos.all

Individual albums are available through the albums property:

>>> api.photos.albums['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)
 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()
['medium', 'original', 'thumb']

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())

Code samples

If you wanna see some code samples see the code samples file.