After yet another bout of operating system soul searching, I’ve landed back on
both iOS and macOS. With this transition from Android and Linux, my software
needs have changed.
Also the Googs has been barking about my needing to upgrade if I want to
continue to store my mountain of photos and videos in Google Photos.
It doesn’t make sense to store my photos in both iCloud Photos and Google
Photos, especially with using Apple devices more exclusively. By consolidating
I’ll be able to remove the Google Photos app from my phone and eliminate the
need to upgrade my Google One cloud storage plan.
How does one export all of their photos from Google Photos? My initial thought
was that I could just select all of my photos from the web interface, and
download them all as a ZIP archive.
That would have been a lot of clicks.
Fortunately, Google does offer a way to export data easily. I would have said
“quickly and easily” but that really depends on the size of your library. It
also depends on what you export, as Google allows you to export everything
that’s associated with your Google account.
To get started, navigate over to the Google Takeout site.
If you’re only interested in exporting your photos, click on Deselect all
and then scroll down to Google Photos. Once you find it, click the checkbox
next to it.
Optionally, you can go through and pick and choose which photo albums you’d like
to include.
With Google Photos selected, scroll all the way to the bottom and click
Next step.
You should now be presented with export options, including how you’d like to
receive the file(s), the frequency of the export, the export’s file type and
even the size of the archive file(s) you receive.
Regardless of which delivery method you choose (direct download link(s) or
exported to a file hosting service like Dropbox) you will receive an email when
everything is ready to go.
The time it takes to receive the email will depend on how much you’re exporting.
For my library, with roughly 70 GB of photos and videos, it took about 10 and a
half hours to complete.
With the exported archive(s) available, you are free to import the photos into
iCloud Photos, or any other service you so desire. If nothing else, if you
simply use them as a backup copy, just in case!
