Facebook may not be your main photo storage solution (at least we hope it’s not), but knowing how to download a backup of all the photos and videos you’ve uploaded to and shared through the. 6 days ago - Suggested Article: Download all photos and videos from Google Photos Note: Sometimes Google limits 500 photos to be downloaded at a time. Click Settings Create a Google Photos folder. In My Drive, find and open the Google Photos folder. Select the folder you want to download. Click More Select All Download. Move all photos to a different Google account. If you accidentally backed up your photos on the wrong Google account, you can move them to a different account.
There's no shortage of ways to store your photos and videos in the cloud.
At Mashable, Google Photos has quickly become our favorite online photo and video storage service because it's free and offers unlimited storage, as long as you're OK with photos being no larger than 16-megapixels and videos no greater than 1080p full HD resolution.
See also: How to back up your Android phone or tablet
Another reason we love Google Photos: It's super easy to get your photos and videos from all your devices into one place. Here's how to do it.
iOS and Android
Google Photos is available as a free app for iOS and Android. If you own a Nexus device with the latest version of Android or a device running a stock version of Android, you may already have it installed.
Once downloaded, it's a matter of letting it auto upload all of your photos and videos into the cloud. If you have tens of thousands of photos and videos like me, it may take quite a bit of time to get your files.
Mac, Windows, camera and memory cards
Auto-uploading your photos and videos from your computer, camera and memory cards is equally as easy.
First, go to the Google Photos website and download the Desktop uploader. Install the app and then log into your Google account.
You'll then be prompted to choose backup sources. On Mac, the app automatically includes your iPhoto Library, Apple Photos Library, Desktop and Pictures folders, but you can click the 'Add folder' button to add more folders or select an external storage location like a camera, memory card or hard drive. You can also, of course, deselect the default backup sources.
We recommend leaving the 'Photo size' set to 'High quality (free unlimited storage).' Click OK and the photos and videos in the selected backup sources will start uploading into Google Photos in the background; new photos and videos added to the folders will automatically upload.
Manual upload
If auto-uploading and backing up your photos and videos from your computer is too extreme, you can always manually upload photos by going to photos.google.com, logging in and clicking the little cloud button with the 'up' arrow inside of it, which is located at the top of the screen.
Alternatively, you can drag and drop files or folders directly into Google Photos to upload them.
Transferring from Flickr
There's no way to directly import your photos from Flickr and upload them to Google Photos. Instead, you'll need to download your Flickr photos and then re-upload them to Google's photo service.
To download Flickr photos, select the ones you want under the Camera Roll tab and click the 'Download' button located at the bottom of the screen. Once the zip folder containing the photos is downloaded, unzip it and manually upload the folder or individual files into Google Photos, as outlined above in the manual upload section.
Transferring from Facebook
Like Flickr, there's no direct way to import your photos from Facebook to Google Photos. Getting your photos off Facebook is also more of a hassle.
You've got two options: 1) manually download all the photos you want and re-upload to Google Photos or 2) download all of your Facebook data, locate your photos and videos, and then re-upload to Google Photos. The latter will get you all your Facebook photos, but the process of downloading all your Facebook data takes an eternity.
Amazon, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, etc.
The situation is similar to getting your photos from other cloud services into Google Photos. You'll need to download pictures and videos to a computer and then re-upload them manually into Google Photos.
We know, it's time-consuming — and figuring out how to download all photos and videos can be a real pain if there's no 'download all' button. But look on the bright side, once they're all stored in Google Photos, you'll be able to search pictures for people and objects using its powerful search feature.
BONUS: The search for the ultimate smartphone camera
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?
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.
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.
Download All My Google Photos
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.
How To Download All Google Photos At Once In One
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!