Google Photos is one of the best options for storing photos in the cloud. When there are hundreds of photos in the gallery, sorting them out could be a painstaking task. With Google Photos, the user’s job becomes easier as it can automatically recognise faces and group photos into albums.
However, at times, privacy issues might bother you and you might be tempted to download everything and stop using the service. Or you might just want to download them and keep a backup to ensure they are never lost.
Download All Google Photos, Videos
The option to download every photo is not actually in Google Photos, but in Google Takeout. This feature lets you download data from any of Google’s services, including Chrome history, Google Play activity, Google Play Books, Hangouts history and Photos.
In order to download all your Google Photos and videos, you can follow the ten steps below in a web browser on a phone of a desktop computer.
1. The first step is to go to Google Takeout and click Deselect all. This ensures you’re not downloading data from your entire Google account.
2. Click on “All photo albums included” to download only specific albums from Google Photos.
3. Now you will see a list of all your albums. If you haven’t separated all your pictures into albums, Google will automatically separate them by year. You might see albums and years. Once you’re content with your selections click OK.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the list of all services and select Next Step.
5. Choose export settings. In the export settings you can choose how often you want to download all your Google Photo content. You can go for the default Export once option here.
6. Now, choose how to download. You can’t download photos directly. The options are to email download links to yourself, or export everything you’ve selected to another cloud storage service. Presently, the options are Dropbox, OneDrive (Microsoft) and Box. It is recommended to use the email option.
7. The next decision is to choose the size of each exported zip file. The default setting is 2GB, and the maximum size is 50GB. Keep in mind, exports larger than 2GB will be compressed in zip64 files. Google warns this may not be supported by older systems, so you may need additional file compression software to unzip your exports. Click Create Export when you’re ready.
8. Your files will now begin exporting. Note that you won’t be able to download your collection immediately. You’ll get an email when the export is complete.
9. Once this is complete, you will get email notification. You can now download each exported zip folder to your hard drive.
Also note, you should get a security authorization email from Google to confirm it’s you requesting to export your photos and not someone else. You may need to authorise it before you’re able to download your photos and videos.
Note: The download links expire after one week.
10. Once the export is complete, it will appear under the Show Exports option in Google Takeout.
