Google Photos is without doubt one of the best options for saving your photos and videos to the cloud. And that still applies even though Google no longer lets you save slightly lower-quality versions for free, which was one of the big attractions.
But since there are no good free alternatives – at least we’re yet to find one with the same search power and editing tools – there’s a good argument for accepting that you’ll have to pay to use it once you’ve used up the storage space Google gives you for free.
In any case, you’re here because you want to download your Google Photos, and that’s precisely what we’re going to show you how to do.
Of course, it isn’t entirely obvious how to do this, which is also why you’re here. We’ll explain how to download just some photos and videos or absolutely everything you’ve got on there.
How to download some photos from Google Photos
This is the simpler task of the two, which is why we’re explaining this first. The process is the same whether you’re downloading photos or videos from Google Photos.
- First head to Google Photos. You’ll need to do this on a laptop or PC (or Mac), as there’s no option in the mobile version to download (you can share, but not download).
- Hover your cursor over a photo and a circle will appear at the top-left corner. Click on this for each photo and video you want to download. You can hold down Shift and click further down the page to select multiple photos at once, or hover over a date and click the tick that appears to select all photos and videos from that day.
- Click on the three dots at the top right and click Download (or press Shift + D).
- Your download should begin.
How to download all Google Photos (and videos)
Downloading everything photos from Google Drive is quite simple, but the option isn’t in Google Photos.
Instead, you’ll need to use the amusingly titled Google Takeout service.
Google Takeout lets you download data from any of Google’s service, including your Chrome history, Google Play activity, Google Play Books, Hangouts history and much more, such as Photos.
You can do this in a web browser on a phone as well as on a desktop computer.
Deselect everything
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Head to Google Takeout and click Deselect all – this ensures you’re not downloading data from your entire Google account
Select Google Photos
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Click on “All photo albums included” to download only specific albums from Google Photos.
Select or deselect albums
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If you want to to download everything, skip this step.
But if you want to download specific albums, or everything from specific years, click “All photo albums included”.
Now you will see a list of all your albums. If you haven’t separated all your pictures into albums (because who has time for that?), Google will automatically separate them by year. You might see albums and years.
Once you’re happy with your selections click OK.
Scroll down and confirm
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Scroll to the bottom of the list of all services and select Next Step.
Choose export settings
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In the export settings you can choose how often you want to download all your Google Photo content. You probably want the default Export once option here.
Choose how to download
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You won’t download the photos directly. The options are to email download links to yourself, or export everything you’ve selected to another cloud storage service. Currently, the options are Dropbox, OneDrive (Microsoft) and Box.
You can also add them to Google Drive, but this seems like a strange choice when the photos are effectively already stored in your Google account.
Here, we’re using the email option.
Choose download size
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The next decision is how large you want each exported zip file to be. 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.
Wait!
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Your files will now begin exporting. This can take a long time – as the message says – even days. So you won’t be able to download your collection immediately. You’ll get an email when the export is complete.
Email notification
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This is what the email will look like when it arrives. You can now download each exported zip folder to your hard drive.
Also note, you should get a security authorisation 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.
Export complete
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Once the export is complete, it will appear under the Show Exports option in Google Takeout.
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Author: Jim Martin, Executive Editor
Jim has been testing and reviewing products for over 20 years. His main beats include VPN services and antivirus. He also covers smart home tech, mesh Wi-Fi and electric bikes.