Well this is interesting. I plugged my phone into my computer to pull some photos off of it and I just happen to start browsing it via Windows Explorer since the device shows up there. Imagine my surprise when I saw things that were in my Hidden folder show up clear as day. It seems that lock is only at an application level and just browsing the file system it’s there to see.
Does anyone else experience something similar? Is there a note I missed that it’s still be available via other means?
I reverse engineered the Apple Photos library file on my Mac and can confirm that they aren’t hidden or encrypted in any way. The assets are just hidden in the respective apps but can be accessed via Finder on macOS and via USB.
No need for reverse engineering - it has already been done: https://github.com/RhetTbull/osxphotos
Thanks for sharing, actually this very project inspired me to do it myself. It is an incredible resource when it comes to certain aspects of the database format!
Imho it has some deeper architectural issues though which I wanted to avoid in my implementation. I’m also using an entirely different tech stack I wanted to train myself in.
My implementation is not as feature complete as osxphotos but I’m sure I will be able to contribute back to the project with the occasional bug fix.
Heeey… Reverse engineering the software is a clear violation of TOS/EULA
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Lol