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Whether you’re moving away from Google Photos or want to back up your photos to an external drive, the simplest way to download all your Google Photos is to use Google Takeout. Here’s how I use it to easily get a download of all my images and videos.
How to Request an Export Using Google Takeout
Google Takeout is a tool that offers you a simple way to export your data from various Google products and services. Basically, it’s meant to allow you easy access to your data for migration and backups.
You can use it to download all your Google Photos media. Using Takeout, you’ll have to request an export, pick your preferred options, and download your data once it has been exported.
To export your Google Photos in one go, follow these steps:
Note that any videos stored in your Google Photos will also be exported. There’s no way to exclude the videos, except for adding all videos to a separate album and excluding that folder from being exported.
Now that you’ve selected what to export, it’s time to adjust the export settings. For destination, you can ask Takeout to email you the download link or upload the file to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box.
By default, the frequency is set to export once, but you can choose to export your data every two months for the next year (in case you want to constantly back up your data). You can also choose to export the photos as a ZIP or TGZ file.
Google Takeout offers five options for file sizes between 1GB and 50GB. If your data exceeds the selected file size, it’ll be exported as multiple files.
Once you’ve selected the export settings, click onCreate exportorLink accounts and create export(depending on your chosen destination).
If you pick Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box as the destination, Google Takeout will ask you to connect your Google account with these services.
Downloading the Export File
After starting the export process, you’ll have to wait for a few hours or days (depending on your data volume). Once the file is ready, Google Takeout will inform you via email.
If you selected theSend download link via emailoption, the email will contain a link to access and download your photos. However, the file will be accessible for one week only.
Alternatively, Takeout will upload the file to your selected cloud storage account and email you the link to the file location. There’s no time limit for downloading here.
The exported ZIP or TGZ file contains separate folders for each album as well as for each year’s images (i.e., photos from 2024, photos from 2023, etc.). Within each folder, you can find your images and metadata (as JSON files). If you don’t want to extract metadata, you can sort the files byType, select all images, and extract them to the desired destination.
Now that you have a backup of your images, you candelete them from Google Photos permanentlyor tryother ways to free up storage space on Google Photos.
