Looking for a way to transfer all of your Google Photos to a PC or Mac? It’s not just you. Although it would seem simple to download all of the photos and films that many of us have in the cloud onto a hard drive, it really requires some effort. Many of us have hundreds, if not thousands, of photos and videos stored in the cloud.
Fortunately, it is doable, and whether you own one of the greatest laptops, PCs, or are more of a fan of the best MacBooks and Macs, we’re here to guide you through the process.
Let’s quickly discuss Google Photos’ cloud storage feature and the reasons why you might wish to download your photos and movies from there onto a hard drive before we get started. In the end, Google Photos is a fantastic tool for safely storing your photos and movies. It’s also simple to use and has excellent cross-platform compatibility.
Even still, having a backup of your collection is a good idea even though Google Photos is one of the top picture cloud storage services accessible in 2022. Having offline backups of your priceless photos can let you to see them whenever you want, regardless of whether you’ve been locked out of your Google account or are travelling and have spotty internet access.
You may download all of your Google Photos to your PC or Mac using any of the methods listed below. Check out our list of the top Google Photos alternatives if you’d want to first consider your options.
How to download all your Google Photos to PC or Mac
If you want to download all your Google Photos to your PC or Mac in one go, you won’t find the option in Google Photos. Instead, for the fastest route to a total backup, you need to use Google Takeout(opens in new tab). This is the same tool that can be used to export all kinds of user data, as well as Keep notes, Mail messages, and your Chrome history.
1. Head to takeout.google.com(opens in new tab).
2. Sign in with your Google account, if you haven’t already done so.
3. Select the content from your Google account that you’d like to download. In this case, we’ll assume you only want to download you Google Photos images and video – so click ‘deselect all’ under the ‘select data to include’ tab.
4. Scroll down the list of products until you find Google Photos and check that. This will include your entire image library in the download. If this is what you want to do, then skip to step #8. If not, read on.
5. If you click the button labeled ‘all photo albums included’ a pop-up will let you select or deselect specific albums in your library – as well as entire years. Thankfully, Takeout will preserve the album structure in the resulting download folder.
Bear in mind, though, that you won’t be able to preview the contents of any albums through Takeout – so you might want to cross-reference each folder’s contents with Google Photos in another tab.
6. After selecting your albums, hit ‘OK’.
7. Scroll down and click ‘next step’.
8. Next, you’ll be presented with a range of export options. The ‘delivery method’ drop-down lets you choose to receive a download link via email once the export is ready.
It also gives you the option of transferring your snaps straight to another cloud provider, including Dropbox, OneDrive, or Box. If your intention is to re-upload your library to one of these platforms, a direct transfer will save significant time and bandwidth.
9. You can also choose between a one-off or periodic exports, and select your desired file type. Most users will find .zip is the best choice.
Additionally, you can set the maximum size of download files. Select 1GB, for example, and exports above that threshold will be split into 1GB chunks for more manageable downloading.
10. Once your settings are sorted, click ‘create export’. You’ll see a message saying ‘Google is creating a copy of files from Google Photos’. Depending on the size of your photo library, this can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.
11. You’ll receive an email when your download is ready. If you’re saving snaps to your device, click ‘download your files’ to get the process rolling. Downloads remain available for a week after creation.
HOW TO DOWNLOAD GOOGLE PHOTOS INDIVIDUALLY
Of course you may not want to download all photos from Google Photos at once, in which case you may find that doing it one at a time is the best approach.
1. Head to Google Photos.
2. Open the photo you want to save.
3. Click the three dots in the top right corner.
4. Select ‘download’.
HOW TO DOWNLOAD SEVERAL PHOTOS AT ONCE
Unless you only have a handful of shots stored in the cloud, downloading individually will be a painstaking way to save all of your photos.
An alternative is to pick batches of snaps to save simultaneously.
1. Open Google Photos on the web
2. Hover over a particular image’s thumbnail and click the checkmark in the top left.
3. You can then click other images to add to your selection. Holding shift when you click will also allow you to highlight batches of snaps between the first and last shots you select.
4. Once you’re happy with your choice, click the three vertical dots in the top right corner.
5. Click ‘download’. Google will compress your chosen shots into a single zip archive, ready for saving.
Choosing only the photos you actually want to preserve enables you to conserve data even if this process isn’t as straightforward as downloading all of your Google Photos photographs at once. In order to make it simpler to search through photos and select your favourite ones, Google also provides a free storage management tool that can be used to find and remove photographs that are blurry or underexposed.
It’s a good idea to download batches of photos that fit your sorting criteria if you intend to organise your photos on your hard disc. Filter your photographs using the search bar, such as by location or date, and then choose from the results. This makes it simple to store related photographs, such as those that come from the same location.
HOW TO DOWNLOAD ALBUMS FROM GOOGLE PHOTOS
If you’ve already sorted your snaps into Google Photos albums – or saved some of Google’s suggested ‘smart albums’ – you can easily download their pre-sorted contents.
1. Under the ‘albums’ tab, select ‘view all albums’ to see your entire collection.
2. Click an individual album.
3. Once it’s loaded, hit those three dots in the top right and select ‘download all’. This will compress all of the images and videos contained in the album into a single zip file for you to download.
This method has the advantage of allowing you to quickly and easily arrange your snaps on your hard drive while still allowing you to choose download them.
The negative? Multiple albums cannot be downloaded at once. Instead, each one must be accessed and saved separately, which might be time-consuming if you have a lot of them.
You now know how to download Google Photos to your PC or Mac using four different methods. We have tips on how to edit photographs in Google Photos, backup to Google Photos, and save Google Photos to iPhone or iCloud, so you might also want to look those up.
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