- Can I Download All My Google Photos At Once
- Download All Google Photos At Once
- Download All Google Photos
Looking for a quick and easy way to download all your pictures and videos from Google Photos? Maybe you want to create a backup locally or want to create a personal movie and need all the content locally stored for editing purposes?
But Google Photos only allow me to download one photo at a time. How to download all photos from Google Photos at once? Google Photos works great in backing up photos to cloud storage and syncing them over all devices, while it neglects users' need to download photos, especially all photos, from the service. For every Google Service you want to download your data, Google Photos included, you can use Google Takeout. At first you may find a little strange as the option is 'Include all Photo Albums/Select Photo Albums' but these photo Albums are actually all your photos, and most albums are created automatically and not presented to you on Google Photos itself.
Whatever the case, there’s a simple way to get all your content downloaded from Google Photos. Note that I previously talked about how you can download photos and videos from Facebook too.
It’s worth noting that if you simply need to download a couple of albums, it’s easier to just do that manually. Click on an album and then click on the three vertical dots at the top right. You’ll see an option called Download All.
This will download all the photos and videos in that album in ZIP format. The only problem with this method is that you can’t use it to download any photos and videos you upload from the Google Photos app on your phone or tablet.
To download all of those pictures and videos, you have to use the method I’m going to talk about below, which is Google Takeout.
Export Google Photos Data
There are two ways you can go about getting to Google Takeout. The easiest way is to follow the link below:
The more long-winded method is to go to Google.com and then click on your profile picture at the top right.
Click on My Account and this will bring you to a kind of dashboard for all settings related to your Google account.
Under the Personal info & privacy heading, click on Control your content.
Can I Download All My Google Photos At Once
You’ll see a Download your data box and a Create Archive link.
The next screen is going to be the same as if you had followed the link mentioned above. Here you can choose what data to include in your archive. By default, everything is selected. Go ahead and click on the Select none button and then click on the toggle button next to Google Photos.
You can click on the down arrow and choose Select photo albums if you want to select individual albums. Note that if you have uploaded a lot of pictures and videos from your phone, Google Photos automatically creates albums that are named by the date.
In my case, I had only created about 450 albums myself, but I have well over 2500 albums in Google Photos because of the camera upload feature on my smartphone. Leave it at Include all photos albums if you want to download everything. Scroll down to the bottom and click Next.
On the next screen, you have to choose the format you want to use for the archive. If you use ZIP, anything over 2 GB will be split into multiple ZIP files. This is kind of annoying if you have hundreds of GBs of data stored in the cloud. In my case, I have 550 GB of photos and videos, so I certainly don’t want to have to click on 225 download links. I’ve tried it once and it’s a pain.
Luckily, you can choose other formats like TGZ and TBZ. You won’t be able to open this using Windows, but you can download a free program like 7-Zip to open the archives. It should be noted that using the ZIP method will be a lot faster because it only has to create 2 GB files, which it can do quickly.
If you choose any of the other formats, the limit for a single files goes up to 50 GB. In my case, that’s only 11 links rather than 225, which is way more convenient. It does take a while longer for a TGZ or TBZ archive to complete, but you’re only talking about a few hours here and there.
By default, you’ll get an email with a link to download the files once the archive has been created. If you want, you can also directly save the archive to Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive, which is kind of nice.
Click the Create archive button and the process will begin. You can close the web browser and the process will continue in the background. You can always go back to Google Takeout and then click on Manage Archives to view the progress.
Overall, Google has made it really easy to download any data that you have stored in any of their services, a feature which is not available with a lot of other companies. If you have any questions, post a comment. Enjoy!
Q. I like having the automatic online backup and storage for my pictures with Google Photos, but I’d also like to edit certain shots and albums with my desktop photo-editing program. How do I grab those photos back from Google?
A. Google added new features to the web version of its Google Photos service this spring to supplement the controls for cropping, color adjustments and filters available through the toolbar’s pencil icon. But if you want to play around with a photo or album in the desktop image editor of your choice, you can easily download copies from the web. Start by logging into your Google Photos page.
If the image you have open on your screen is one you would like to download, click the three-dot More menu in the upper-right corner of the screen. Choose the Download option.
To grab multiple images for downloading from the main Google Photos thumbnail screen, move the cursor to each thumbnail’s upper-left corner until a white checkmark icon appears. Click it to turn the checkmark blue. When you have selected the photos you want, click the More menu icon and choose Download. You should see a compressed archive of pictures in your Downloads folder (or wherever you put your downloaded files).
If you want to get a whole album of photos, select the Albums icon on the left side of the screen and click the album to open it. In the More menu, choose Download All.
Download All Google Photos At Once
The photos should retain their embedded information (also known as EXIF data), details like camera settings and location coordinates, and you should get the images in the largest resolution Google Photos has for them.
Because the service allows you to choose between the original resolution and a compressed “high quality” version when you upload them, the downloaded files may be of a lower resolution than the originals. Once you have the pictures downloaded to your computer, import them into your preferred desktop photo-editing program.
Download All Google Photos
If you have hundreds of albums in Google Photos and want to get them all at once, you can use the Google Takeout service for bulk downloading; be aware that the pictures may lose their EXIF data with this method. Google Takeout, available from the Personal Info & Privacy section of your account settings page, can also be used to download data from all the Google products you use, including Gmail, Drive, Contacts, Maps and more.