Fantastic info - OMG I'm glad I did a search before a threw myself at Google Takeout. One question though. You say that the maximum number in a single album is 500. I have albums, and can create albums, with many more. I did a search and it seems like the max is 20.000 ... changed from 10.000 in 2018.
@@marblejarchannel I just tested it right now and I'm also able to download more than 500 images. I've setup my albums just like your quarterly system from the video, and because of vacations some have been well over 800 but have downloaded with no issue.
I currently have between 88,000-97,000 photos in My Google Photos starting way back in 2004. I’m just wondering why Google won’t allow an option to just drag and drop EVERY photo onto a USB Flash Drive and or External Hard Drive.
Yes, you can CREATE albums that hold thousands of photos/videos but what she said in this video is that Google only allows to DOWNLOAD folders with max 500 files. I'm not sure if I understood you correctly.
6 minutes of video of straightforward, eloquent, concise explanation that are going to save me countless hours of tidying up photos. I love the Internet.
As of today (August 2021), it seems like we no longer have the 500 items per album rule. I have succesfully downloaded an album with 2000+ items. FYI all.
I literally spent hours and days doing the Takeout method, what garbage! Excellent recap here, will definitely be using this method. THANK YOU FOR SHARING
What a blessing you are for recording what you learned the hard way!!! Your tutorial is an excellent example of how everyone should do a tutorial. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!!
Spent days on google takeout only to realize what a complete mess it is. Your video and the pinned comment has given me a pinch of something i call hope.
Ooook, I started Takeout download last night. NEED that metadata!!! Thank you for saving me time and heartache. I will begin setting up my photos into Quarters. I will do better going forward. By far one of the best videos I have watched on TH-cam.
I am 64, I am so immensely grateful to you for this, as I have been wrestling with this for almost 2 years, one photo at a time off and on. This is Clear, Concise, and it Works, YaY! Thank you!!!
Excellent tip! I tried google takeout and ended up with 20 separate 50gb files with no metadata and random organization. Other methods suggested on the web to reorganize them requires python scripts and just makes things a lot more complex. This is quick and easy to understand.
Almost 2 years later and this is still applicable. Too bad I had already done the Takeout thing; however, I deleted all that and and am using your method which is still much faster. Thanks you.
I love this method. I have been trying to consolidate my photos but google was making me mad with how hard it was to get the photos off! So glad I found your method. Thanks
This info just made my day as I'm out of storage. Tried take out and it's ridiculous. Thank you!!! Much appreciated. It's been 2 years and this is still helping people. Fantastic.
Without being alarmist, I have had 2 western digital and 1 Toshiba backup drives (1tb each) crash and die (unrecoverable ) over the past 3 years. I have had a 250GB HDD since 2005 - still works well. I don’t trust them - i backup to 2 hard drives and Dropbox (no particular reason). Your 1 hard drive model is too risky for me 🙈. I love your videos 👍👍
Laura, thank you for explaining your method in layman's terms. You explained a complex subject in a manner that anyone should be able to understand and use. Thank you for taking the time to make this video.
Great video, Google really has dropped the ball on Takeout. Just for anyone who hasn't setup their Albums yet, in Photos if you search for 2021 Q1 it will return photos within that time period. Helpful for organising :)
I tried the same thing...ran in to the same problem. Have to start over, and this validates the plan I was going to do. I'm also going to have extra albums, for vacations, Christmas, and the like. Thanks for posting!
Hi Laura! You are probably aware by now but if not you can right click on your transferred stored photos, select Sort, go down to More, and from there click on Date Taken. That will enable you to see your photos chronologically. Great video!
Wow, this is a huge help! I just used Takeout and was so irritated how they came over and what's this JSON... Ugh... thank you for this! I'm hoping just this now. I'm also subscribing for any additional content. Thanks again & cheeres doll!
I used takeout and I was so confused with all those .json files. Plus all my photos were without date of creation. It was a mess! Thank God I didn't delete them from Google Photos. Your video literally saved me. Thank you so much!
Thanks! This was super helpful. It's super annoying that Google once had an efficient system for storing photos on Google Drive but took that option away about a year ago. All I want to do is find where my photos are stored on Google Drive but they're nowhere to be found. They once had something that worked and changed it to something that doesn't. It's a shame we have to do it like this now but thank you, nonetheless.
Still a complete PITA when you have a zillion unstructured photos and not organized like you did. Thank you for this alternative...it is STILL better than just plain takeout.... one wonders if G doesn’t WANT you to export (grin)....
I really see where you're coming from using this method. It really is a good one. However, for me, having over 500k photos backed up to google photos, with a size of about 1.9TB, this method simply isn't feasible, since I'd take years to add 500 photos to one album to download them (I'd literally have to make 1000 albums for this). Wish google would make something easier....
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. I was watching someone else's video about using Takeout and then saw your video's title saying "Don't Use Takeout!" so I watched yours. You helped me with the thing I was most concerned about which was the date. THANK YOU. I agree, this is what I would save first in a fire. My other thought process about why I would save it external to Google Photos is if one day I'm not around, how will anybody access any of my photos?
I am still having a problem finding the right created date. When I download the pictures the modified and created date are the same. This has been super frustrating because I want to be able to see the date that the picture was taken. Do you have any experience with this and how to fix it. Do I have a setting wrong?
While it is very unlikely that your house will be destroyed and Google will stop providing you with storage, there is one fairly simple thing you can do to even save yourself from that eventuality - just have another external disk drive with a copy of your photos that is updated routinely and stored elsewhere. BTW, you should consider also backing up documents and other important files the same way. One piece of software I use is Beyond Compare. It allows me to only copy the new files during backup. (P.S. I once had 2 disk drives go belly up at the same time, but fortunately I had a 3rd one that did not.)
Google Takeout is a disaster. I ended up creating albums like you recommended and then I also downloaded those by each day. It takes enormous amount of time to download everything, but it could be achieved.
Great video. However, it seems the one thing that doesn't export are the captions/descriptions you've added in Google Photos. Anyone know how to do that?
you just saved me from Google Takeout hell! I was just going through the first portion of downloads from there and knew it wasn't gonna work for me. thank you for this.
Oh my gosh amazing thank you so much for this straightforward yet very helpful video! I have almost 200 GB worth of google photos files so this task is definitely going to be tedious but hopefully this method ends up working & I will definitely be making a spreadsheet for this!
uhhh.. THANK YOU! so much! I think it's a great idea that you organize the albums by quarter and use a spreadsheet! These tips are seriously helpful thank you for this!
I extracted takeout file with WINRAR. It was a backup of my Google drive that had photos and videos. It worked superfine for me. Gave me back my photos and videos just like how I originally organized them.
THANK YOU for this. Key info... you can download ALBUMS just not individual photos. Having fun now putting 10 years of photos into topic albums. A project for some time to come. I haven't dared delete any front Google yet, but having deleted 10 thousand!! emails today I can use my phone for a bit longer! You have saved me so much trouble... many many thanks
Forgot to.say that if you are an Amazon prime member you get unlimited original quality picture backup and 5Gb video backup so set your external drive to sync to Amazon afterwards
The video is really amazing..but i am facing a problem..while downloading some albums are having their original date and time..but some are not having it in file info option.. can anyone tell a solution for this problem please
Thank you so much. I also have been struggling and accidently tried the same way as you. After watching your video I know that's the best way. Thank you.
Thank you!! I have used takeout and was also not happy. Your clearly stated steps are much needed and appreciated and I will commence downloading today. (Have also subscribed to your channel for clear and concise advice in the future.)
This was extremely helpful thank you! So much easier than trying to deal with Google Takeout. Took me a bit of time but in the end now that I'm caught up to the present it'll be easy to maintain.
Thank you so much 💓. I was literally crying thinking I lost my picture then I saw your video and cried with rejoice from having all my pictures...from the bottom of my heart than you so much ♥️ .
Thank you! I was looking at my Google Takeout download and thought there must be a better technique to exporting from Google Photos. Your explanation was very clear, and I have re-oriented my download to be per album. Thank you so much!
Just note that this works better if you use original quality. If the photos are compressed (the setting most users will have) they wont get exactly the originals to backup
You are a GENIUS. I take tons of photos and I think this is finally a process that will work for me. THANK YOU for posting this so I didn't waste my time with Takeout.
Using this way of downloading did you find that the photographs are down sampled? Please let me know how to keep the size of the original file when downloading. Thanks
Just scrolled through the comments to find out if anybody else came across this problem or if it's just me. Apparently, this is really a problem. Per Take out, I get the original size and quality, while the album downloads are down sampled. Thus, alas, this method doesn't work for me either.
Great advice, unfortunately now my photos are in albums, backed up in extract files on my external hard drive and I cannot pull them up to print them. Thoughts?
I didn't do a search before I saw this so I waded through the muck only to get photos in a jumble at the end. lol I will be following this method. :) Thank you!
I hated takeout so much !! I'm so happy you came with this idea it'll take me a while but definitely creating albums the next few evenings to get this going.
Hey, can you please share your progress? Did this work for you? I'm asking because i tried it myself and apparently the creation date gets modified for me so i was wondering if google had changed this since the video was posted. Thanks
Thanks for the great tip, i've been able to download albums with more than 1200 photos. Sometimes downloading large albums I noticed that it's missing one or two photos, but re-downloading the same album fixes that problem, just a heads up for anyone that notices missing photos from downloaded albums
I think this process works for those with a manageable number of photos, however I have 2TB and not practical. If you change the archive size to the biggest available, 50GB and select Google Drive as the destination you dont get the issue with the seperate metadata, the files appear in your google drive and you simply use google drive sync to sync to your home HDD. It will take a few days but it is by far the easiest process and worked well for me
I would like some clarity on your comment please. First, I assume you are referring to the archive setting in Takeout, correct? Second, using your method of moving pics first to Drive prior to downloading to a local drive, does Takeout MOVE the pics from photos to Drive, or does it COPY the photos to Drive? The reason for that second question is that if Takeout COPIES the pics to Drive, vs MOVING the pics to drive, then I would need at least as much free space as the photos I'm moving because Google would basically be DOUBLING my needed storage to FACILITATE the transfer. Example: I have 30 GB of photos but only 10 GB of the 100 GB storage available in Drive. So in this example I would need a minimum of 120 GB of total storage (with a minimum of 30 GB still open in Drive) (this is just a mathematical example as I do understand that Google doesn't offer a 20 GB storage space upsell) else I would hit my 100 GB limit (or obviously delete a minimum of 20 GB from my current Drive account, which of course I don't want to do.) I would like your input on this before I start this potentially onerous process. Thanx in advance.
Thank you for your insights and suggestions. I have 400GB of photos and videos and close to 100K photos in Google. Those are sorted by each activity, which basically means I have several hundred albums. The thing is, even if I download all my albums, there will be photos that won't get downloaded because the albums are just the highlighted photos. I am torn between using your method and losing all my albums, or just download each of my albums and disregard those not already in the albums. Sigh.. But thank you for the info about EXIF data NOT in the takeout.
Hi, there. In your case, I might create chronological albums solely for the purpose of downloading (and leave your activity based ones, of course). You can even delete them after you finish since (theoretically) you won’t be adding new photos to those past album. That way they won’t clutter up your album page. Just a thought - good luck and thanks for the comments!
Thankyou so much for taking time to make this video and saving my time from going down the Google Takeout route. I get the feeling that Google make it deliberateley difficult to export your photos and videos so that you have to subscribe and pay for their cloud service when you run out of storage space. The thing that makes me suspicious is they have an Import button and no Export button!
Thank you very very much! Incredibly helpful and demonstrative video! I only needed to watch an extra one showing step-by-step the extraction - un-zipping process. Thank you for your time and trouble saving video ❤️
Thank you so much for this recommendation! I discovered that albums that are up to 2100 pictures in size can be downloaded -- not sure what the upper limit is as I didn't have any problems. Google Takeout is a mess -- and your suggestion saved me so much time and effort!
Wow I've been looking for how to do this and your presentation is the most clear and makes it easy! Also love the excel sheet which I am doing myself. Thanks so much for this!
Thanks! I am right there realizing that for the future I will be managing photos like Taxes....It will be yearly. But for this year I have to deal with 5 years. And I was trying to to do takeout and that is tricky.
Great video thank you so much. I need to do this as we have too many photos on Google Photos and to be honest I dont even know what is up there I am sure a lot of them can be deleted..... Thank you
THIS VIDEO IS SO IMPORTANT AND CRUCIAL FOR EVERYBODY TO WATCH. TAKEOUT IS A JOKE AND I DID THE SAME THING, AND ENEDED UP WITH A DISASTER AND ZIP FILES CORRUPT AND EVEN ONE HUGE MPEG FILE. I AM GOING TO TRY YOUR METH. THANKS AGAIN FOR THIS VIDEO
Thanks for the video. I wish you would have talked about the original resolution of the photos. I am having a hard time using your second method and not able to download the original 12.2MB photo, instead I get the compress version stored in google photos (2.2MB) and not the original 12.2MB.
Any suggestions for someone who's constantly making changes to their albums in Google Photos? For example, instead of using a quarterly system, I have different albums in Google Photos for different photo types (cars, landscapes, animals, etc.). I would add photos to these albums year-round but would also sometimes remove some photos from these albums. Are there any good strategies to back up my entire Google Photos library (maybe I'll do this once a month) so that my local copy would always be synced with my online Google Photos library?
What platform are you opening the photo with in order to see the meta data? I'm on Mac and can't find the meta data after downloading the photos like you described...
Thanks a lot.. At first when I heard you I thought yours is a long & complicated process. So I continue working on Google Take Out, like increasing Zip limit from 2gb to 50gb or decreasing to 1gb or directly transfeing to Google Drive(😂actually I got these ideas from some great man's comments on this video) Believe me, nothing happened except wastage of my Data(money)& Time. Lastly I hear you patiently. I can't believe what a EASY process it is ‼️‼️
Any suggestions on a workflow to download a dozen years of Google Photos (over 50GB) and retiring the files in a usable format? I want to retain all of the metadata too (original dates etc).
This helped me so much, just an update I was able to download a little more than 3000 in an album, didn't try for me just to be safe. But you can put more into an album before now. 😊
What a helpful video. I was attempting to do Google Takeout and it was a nightmare. Glad to find your video to confirm it wasn't just me. And I like your quarterly idea for the photos.
I'd recomend a NAS to keep your photos on. It gets a little pricy, but it comes down how valuable your time is. If that one external drive failes, you'll be doing all that over again. If you don't want to get a NAS, a second backup drive will certainly be better than the single drive. There are lots of ways to do it, but NAS will be the safe investment.
Thank you for your advice and direction. I would have hated to have the pictures and metadata separated. I just put 8 years into monthly folders and it worked perfectly!
I downloaded my album just like you described on my windows computer and I attempt to open and instead of showing JPG Files for my images, it's all in HEIC. How can I make them all JPG? Thank you.
Thank you very much for your tutorial .... Very helpful .... I lost all my original photos on 3 previous phones but have done routine backups every time I connect to wifi. And at that time I used Google Takeout, the process took a very long time and the folderization was bad in my opinion. You come with a simple tutorial but very helpful ... thanks for the help ..... greetings from Indonesia
I just wanted to confirm that there doesn't seem to be a limit any longer to the number of files within an album that you can download at one time. I just downloaded an album with over 3,000 photos and videos in it and it worked perfectly.
I have my photos saved via year, then broken down in files with subject names, families, events, etc. How do I do the download that way instead of your Q1, Q2 etc?
Hello! Great video, thanks so much for the info, very helpful. The one problem I am running into is that now when I download my album from google photo it only stores the date that the album was downloaded for each photo rather than the date taken. Any thoughts on this?
I agree, it's a good idea to backup your photos using multiple sources. I used to backup my pictures on Amazon drive years ago and it was just announced that Amazon will be SHUTTING DOWN their drive service at the end of 2023!!
I wish the metadata didn't change, but I like your download method. I had so many photos I had to break them into individual months instead of quarters. Thanks for taking the time to post your video. I appreciate you.
Fantastic info - OMG I'm glad I did a search before a threw myself at Google Takeout. One question though. You say that the maximum number in a single album is 500. I have albums, and can create albums, with many more. I did a search and it seems like the max is 20.000 ... changed from 10.000 in 2018.
@@marblejarchannel I just tested it right now and I'm also able to download more than 500 images. I've setup my albums just like your quarterly system from the video, and because of vacations some have been well over 800 but have downloaded with no issue.
@@johnbod This is great info. I'll try to figure out how to pin your comment. Thanks!
I currently have between 88,000-97,000 photos in My Google Photos starting way back in 2004. I’m just wondering why Google won’t allow an option to just drag and drop EVERY photo onto a USB Flash Drive and or External Hard Drive.
Because they don't want you to be able to leave their ecosystem that easily. They want your money ;)
Yes, you can CREATE albums that hold thousands of photos/videos but what she said in this video is that Google only allows to DOWNLOAD folders with max 500 files. I'm not sure if I understood you correctly.
6 minutes of video of straightforward, eloquent, concise explanation that are going to save me countless hours of tidying up photos. I love the Internet.
But it just isn't... just use Takeout, you'll get all your photos and also sorted in their albums.
Even better, it looks like the photo download limit has been lifted. I've downloaded albums of well over 800 photos recently.
As of today (August 2021), it seems like we no longer have the 500 items per album rule. I have succesfully downloaded an album with 2000+ items. FYI all.
I literally spent hours and days doing the Takeout method, what garbage! Excellent recap here, will definitely be using this method. THANK YOU FOR SHARING
What a blessing you are for recording what you learned the hard way!!! Your tutorial is an excellent example of how everyone should do a tutorial. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!!
Spent days on google takeout only to realize what a complete mess it is. Your video and the pinned comment has given me a pinch of something i call hope.
Ooook, I started Takeout download last night. NEED that metadata!!! Thank you for saving me time and heartache. I will begin setting up my photos into Quarters. I will do better going forward. By far one of the best videos I have watched on TH-cam.
I am 64, I am so immensely grateful to you for this, as I have been wrestling with this for almost 2 years, one photo at a time off and on. This is Clear, Concise, and it Works, YaY! Thank you!!!
Excellent tip! I tried google takeout and ended up with 20 separate 50gb files with no metadata and random organization. Other methods suggested on the web to reorganize them requires python scripts and just makes things a lot more complex. This is quick and easy to understand.
But limited to 500 photos per album. Sad Google can't do this right and forces users to figure out workarounds.
Almost 2 years later and this is still applicable. Too bad I had already done the Takeout thing; however, I deleted all that and and am using your method which is still much faster. Thanks you.
Hi! Thank you for the video, and I have a question. How to transfer these photos to my iCloud and photo gallery then?
I love this method. I have been trying to consolidate my photos but google was making me mad with how hard it was to get the photos off! So glad I found your method. Thanks
Omg I love you. I just wasted the last 3 hours doing that ridiculous google takeout, only to delete it all 😵💫 this worked perfectly!! thank yooooou!!
This info just made my day as I'm out of storage. Tried take out and it's ridiculous. Thank you!!! Much appreciated. It's been 2 years and this is still helping people. Fantastic.
Without being alarmist, I have had 2 western digital and 1 Toshiba backup drives (1tb each) crash and die (unrecoverable ) over the past 3 years. I have had a 250GB HDD since 2005 - still works well. I don’t trust them - i backup to 2 hard drives and Dropbox (no particular reason). Your 1 hard drive model is too risky for me 🙈. I love your videos 👍👍
Just use NAS with RAID
i spent all day yesterday messing with takeout. what a horrible experience. this will work much better, thank you.
Laura, thank you for explaining your method in layman's terms. You explained a complex subject in a manner that anyone should be able to understand and use. Thank you for taking the time to make this video.
Great video, Google really has dropped the ball on Takeout.
Just for anyone who hasn't setup their Albums yet, in Photos if you search for 2021 Q1 it will return photos within that time period. Helpful for organising :)
This is great information - thanks for commenting!
I tried the same thing...ran in to the same problem. Have to start over, and this validates the plan I was going to do. I'm also going to have extra albums, for vacations, Christmas, and the like. Thanks for posting!
Hi Laura! You are probably aware by now but if not you can right click on your transferred stored photos, select Sort, go down to More, and from there click on Date Taken. That will enable you to see your photos chronologically. Great video!
Which app were you talking about? I didn't see the Sort option when I right click the photos on Windows 10 File Explorer.
U saved 10 years of my life!!! Thank you so much!!! ❤
Thank you for the 101 without any music! It's simple and to the point and your video should be treated as a benchmark. Much appreciated.
Wow, this is a huge help! I just used Takeout and was so irritated how they came over and what's this JSON... Ugh... thank you for this! I'm hoping just this now. I'm also subscribing for any additional content. Thanks again & cheeres doll!
I used takeout and I was so confused with all those .json files. Plus all my photos were without date of creation. It was a mess! Thank God I didn't delete them from Google Photos. Your video literally saved me. Thank you so much!
I appreciate your hint to not use Takeout and look forward to hearing a recommended approach. I look forward to getting your material
Thanks! This was super helpful. It's super annoying that Google once had an efficient system for storing photos on Google Drive but took that option away about a year ago. All I want to do is find where my photos are stored on Google Drive but they're nowhere to be found. They once had something that worked and changed it to something that doesn't. It's a shame we have to do it like this now but thank you, nonetheless.
Still a complete PITA when you have a zillion unstructured photos and not organized like you did. Thank you for this alternative...it is STILL better than just plain takeout.... one wonders if G doesn’t WANT you to export (grin)....
I really see where you're coming from using this method. It really is a good one. However, for me, having over 500k photos backed up to google photos, with a size of about 1.9TB, this method simply isn't feasible, since I'd take years to add 500 photos to one album to download them (I'd literally have to make 1000 albums for this). Wish google would make something easier....
This sounds light years more efficient than my current method! Thank you for saving the day!!!!!(or several days, if google had had any say about it)
You have no idea how long I've been searching for a method like this. Thank you!!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. I was watching someone else's video about using Takeout and then saw your video's title saying "Don't Use Takeout!" so I watched yours. You helped me with the thing I was most concerned about which was the date. THANK YOU. I agree, this is what I would save first in a fire. My other thought process about why I would save it external to Google Photos is if one day I'm not around, how will anybody access any of my photos?
I am still having a problem finding the right created date. When I download the pictures the modified and created date are the same. This has been super frustrating because I want to be able to see the date that the picture was taken. Do you have any experience with this and how to fix it. Do I have a setting wrong?
It does change the modified date but preserves the taken date. Just enable the taken date in view for folder
While it is very unlikely that your house will be destroyed and Google will stop providing you with storage, there is one fairly simple thing you can do to even save yourself from that eventuality - just have another external disk drive with a copy of your photos that is updated routinely and stored elsewhere. BTW, you should consider also backing up documents and other important files the same way. One piece of software I use is Beyond Compare. It allows me to only copy the new files during backup. (P.S. I once had 2 disk drives go belly up at the same time, but fortunately I had a 3rd one that did not.)
I found this information clear and to the point... I attempted to download all my photos unsuccessfully before, now I know what to do thanks to you!
Your series of videos are the best I have ever seen or used!!
Such a nice comment - thank you so much!
Thanks - it speaks volumes that google make this so difficult. Great job.
❤
the amount of times I laughed at the pure candidness of your approach , your suprisingly hilarious
Google Takeout is a disaster. I ended up creating albums like you recommended and then I also downloaded those by each day. It takes enormous amount of time to download everything, but it could be achieved.
Great video. However, it seems the one thing that doesn't export are the captions/descriptions you've added in Google Photos. Anyone know how to do that?
Hi any updates on how to download from Google Photos or this is still the best method?
you just saved me from Google Takeout hell! I was just going through the first portion of downloads from there and knew it wasn't gonna work for me. thank you for this.
Thank you ! Wish I had seen this before using Takeout. Will be making quarter folders - love that idea !
Oh my gosh amazing thank you so much for this straightforward yet very helpful video! I have almost 200 GB worth of google photos files so this task is definitely going to be tedious but hopefully this method ends up working & I will definitely be making a spreadsheet for this!
uhhh.. THANK YOU! so much! I think it's a great idea that you organize the albums by quarter and use a spreadsheet! These tips are seriously helpful thank you for this!
I extracted takeout file with WINRAR. It was a backup of my Google drive that had photos and videos. It worked superfine for me. Gave me back my photos and videos just like how I originally organized them.
Thanks for this info! Glad to hear it worked well.
How did you do it? Did the photos have the right metadata?
@@cristiannavarrete1424looking for this answer as well… did you manage to understand?
THANK YOU for this. Key info... you can download ALBUMS just not individual photos. Having fun now putting 10 years of photos into topic albums. A project for some time to come. I haven't dared delete any front Google yet, but having deleted 10 thousand!! emails today I can use my phone for a bit longer! You have saved me so much trouble... many many thanks
Forgot to.say that if you are an Amazon prime member you get unlimited original quality picture backup and 5Gb video backup so set your external drive to sync to Amazon afterwards
The video is really amazing..but i am facing a problem..while downloading some albums are having their original date and time..but some are not having it in file info option.. can anyone tell a solution for this problem please
Thank you so much. I also have been struggling and accidently tried the same way as you. After watching your video I know that's the best way. Thank you.
Thank you!! I have used takeout and was also not happy. Your clearly stated steps are much needed and appreciated and I will commence downloading today. (Have also subscribed to your channel for clear and concise advice in the future.)
Thanks for this. I just tried Takeout (over several days) and learned it was useless.
Your advice is appreciated!
This was extremely helpful thank you! So much easier than trying to deal with Google Takeout. Took me a bit of time but in the end now that I'm caught up to the present it'll be easy to maintain.
Thank you so much 💓. I was literally crying thinking I lost my picture then I saw your video and cried with rejoice from having all my pictures...from the bottom of my heart than you so much ♥️ .
Thank you! I was looking at my Google Takeout download and thought there must be a better technique to exporting from Google Photos. Your explanation was very clear, and I have re-oriented my download to be per album. Thank you so much!
Just note that this works better if you use original quality. If the photos are compressed (the setting most users will have) they wont get exactly the originals to backup
Such a brilliant approach! I'm organizing my photos like that now. Thank you for sharing!
You are a GENIUS. I take tons of photos and I think this is finally a process that will work for me. THANK YOU for posting this so I didn't waste my time with Takeout.
Using this way of downloading did you find that the photographs are down sampled? Please let me know how to keep the size of the original file when downloading. Thanks
Just scrolled through the comments to find out if anybody else came across this problem or if it's just me. Apparently, this is really a problem. Per Take out, I get the original size and quality, while the album downloads are down sampled. Thus, alas, this method doesn't work for me either.
Great advice, unfortunately now my photos are in albums, backed up in extract files on my external hard drive and I cannot pull them up to print them. Thoughts?
Maybe expand the files before putting them on your external disk?
I didn't do a search before I saw this so I waded through the muck only to get photos in a jumble at the end. lol I will be following this method. :) Thank you!
I hated takeout so much !! I'm so happy you came with this idea it'll take me a while but definitely creating albums the next few evenings to get this going.
Hey, can you please share your progress? Did this work for you? I'm asking because i tried it myself and apparently the creation date gets modified for me so i was wondering if google had changed this since the video was posted. Thanks
Thank you for this video. I don't look forward to the amount of time it will take to do all of this but it's worth it.
Thanks for the great tip, i've been able to download albums with more than 1200 photos. Sometimes downloading large albums I noticed that it's missing one or two photos, but re-downloading the same album fixes that problem, just a heads up for anyone that notices missing photos from downloaded albums
I think this process works for those with a manageable number of photos, however I have 2TB and not practical. If you change the archive size to the biggest available, 50GB and select Google Drive as the destination you dont get the issue with the seperate metadata, the files appear in your google drive and you simply use google drive sync to sync to your home HDD. It will take a few days but it is by far the easiest process and worked well for me
I would like some clarity on your comment please.
First, I assume you are referring to the archive setting in Takeout, correct?
Second, using your method of moving pics first to Drive prior to downloading to a local drive, does Takeout MOVE the pics from photos to Drive, or does it COPY the photos to Drive?
The reason for that second question is that if Takeout COPIES the pics to Drive, vs MOVING the pics to drive, then I would need at least as much free space as the photos I'm moving because Google would basically be DOUBLING my needed storage to FACILITATE the transfer.
Example: I have 30 GB of photos but only 10 GB of the 100 GB storage available in Drive. So in this example I would need a minimum of 120 GB of total storage (with a minimum of 30 GB still open in Drive) (this is just a mathematical example as I do understand that Google doesn't offer a 20 GB storage space upsell) else I would hit my 100 GB limit (or obviously delete a minimum of 20 GB from my current Drive account, which of course I don't want to do.)
I would like your input on this before I start this potentially onerous process.
Thanx in advance.
Thank you for your insights and suggestions. I have 400GB of photos and videos and close to 100K photos in Google. Those are sorted by each activity, which basically means I have several hundred albums. The thing is, even if I download all my albums, there will be photos that won't get downloaded because the albums are just the highlighted photos. I am torn between using your method and losing all my albums, or just download each of my albums and disregard those not already in the albums. Sigh.. But thank you for the info about EXIF data NOT in the takeout.
Hi, there. In your case, I might create chronological albums solely for the purpose of downloading (and leave your activity based ones, of course). You can even delete them after you finish since (theoretically) you won’t be adding new photos to those past album. That way they won’t clutter up your album page. Just a thought - good luck and thanks for the comments!
Thankyou so much for taking time to make this video and saving my time from going down the Google Takeout route. I get the feeling that Google make it deliberateley difficult to export your photos and videos so that you have to subscribe and pay for their cloud service when you run out of storage space. The thing that makes me suspicious is they have an Import button and no Export button!
WOW! You’re amazing I was freaking out trying to save my photos and then I found your video! You’re a life saver!!!
Thank you very very much! Incredibly helpful and demonstrative video! I only needed to watch an extra one showing step-by-step the extraction - un-zipping process. Thank you for your time and trouble saving video ❤️
Thanks, this was so easy. I couldn't even find Photos in the Takeout list. This was great!
Thank you so much for this recommendation! I discovered that albums that are up to 2100 pictures in size can be downloaded -- not sure what the upper limit is as I didn't have any problems. Google Takeout is a mess -- and your suggestion saved me so much time and effort!
Wow I've been looking for how to do this and your presentation is the most clear and makes it easy! Also love the excel sheet which I am doing myself. Thanks so much for this!
Thanks! I am right there realizing that for the future I will be managing photos like Taxes....It will be yearly. But for this year I have to deal with 5 years. And I was trying to to do takeout and that is tricky.
Great video thank you so much. I need to do this as we have too many photos on Google Photos and to be honest I dont even know what is up there I am sure a lot of them can be deleted..... Thank you
THIS VIDEO IS SO IMPORTANT AND CRUCIAL FOR EVERYBODY TO WATCH. TAKEOUT IS A JOKE AND I DID THE SAME THING, AND ENEDED UP WITH A DISASTER AND ZIP FILES CORRUPT AND EVEN ONE HUGE MPEG FILE. I AM GOING TO TRY YOUR METH. THANKS AGAIN FOR THIS VIDEO
I was just about to download all those TakeOut files, but good thing I saw your video. You are so helpful, thank you!
Thanks for the video. I wish you would have talked about the original resolution of the photos. I am having a hard time using your second method and not able to download the original 12.2MB photo, instead I get the compress version stored in google photos (2.2MB) and not the original 12.2MB.
Any suggestions for someone who's constantly making changes to their albums in Google Photos? For example, instead of using a quarterly system, I have different albums in Google Photos for different photo types (cars, landscapes, animals, etc.). I would add photos to these albums year-round but would also sometimes remove some photos from these albums. Are there any good strategies to back up my entire Google Photos library (maybe I'll do this once a month) so that my local copy would always be synced with my online Google Photos library?
Thanks for saving my memories....good, knowledgeable and crisp clear video...
Honestly the best method I've seen. Thank you.
Thank you for making this video! I have been trying to figure this out forever. You make this very clear and easy to follow.
What platform are you opening the photo with in order to see the meta data? I'm on Mac and can't find the meta data after downloading the photos like you described...
Great illustration down-to-Earth , dear friend ! Now I will try to find the Album download dots etc, 😊 Thank you so much !
Thanks a lot.. At first when I heard you I thought yours is a long & complicated process.
So I continue working on Google Take Out, like increasing Zip limit from 2gb to 50gb or decreasing to 1gb or directly transfeing to Google Drive(😂actually I got these ideas from some great man's comments on this video)
Believe me, nothing happened except wastage of my Data(money)& Time.
Lastly I hear you patiently. I can't believe what a EASY process it is ‼️‼️
Any suggestions on a workflow to download a dozen years of Google Photos (over 50GB) and retiring the files in a usable format? I want to retain all of the metadata too (original dates etc).
Can't tell you how helpful this was. Thanks a lot dear
This helped me so much, just an update I was able to download a little more than 3000 in an album, didn't try for me just to be safe. But you can put more into an album before now. 😊
What a helpful video. I was attempting to do Google Takeout and it was a nightmare. Glad to find your video to confirm it wasn't just me. And I like your quarterly idea for the photos.
I'd recomend a NAS to keep your photos on. It gets a little pricy, but it comes down how valuable your time is. If that one external drive failes, you'll be doing all that over again. If you don't want to get a NAS, a second backup drive will certainly be better than the single drive. There are lots of ways to do it, but NAS will be the safe investment.
This is awesome!! I’ve been thinking a lot about doing this for some time now and this has inspired me to get moving. Thank you.
Thank you for your advice and direction. I would have hated to have the pictures and metadata separated. I just put 8 years into monthly folders and it worked perfectly!
I downloaded my album just like you described on my windows computer and I attempt to open and instead of showing JPG Files for my images, it's all in HEIC. How can I make them all JPG? Thank you.
Thank you very much for your tutorial .... Very helpful .... I lost all my original photos on 3 previous phones but have done routine backups every time I connect to wifi. And at that time I used Google Takeout, the process took a very long time and the folderization was bad in my opinion. You come with a simple tutorial but very helpful ... thanks for the help .....
greetings from Indonesia
Thank you, thank you, thank you!! I've been struggling with Takeout and yours is the perfect solution for me.
I just wanted to confirm that there doesn't seem to be a limit any longer to the number of files within an album that you can download at one time. I just downloaded an album with over 3,000 photos and videos in it and it worked perfectly.
I have my photos saved via year, then broken down in files with subject names, families, events, etc. How do I do the download that way instead of your Q1, Q2 etc?
Hello! Great video, thanks so much for the info, very helpful. The one problem I am running into is that now when I download my album from google photo it only stores the date that the album was downloaded for each photo rather than the date taken. Any thoughts on this?
Just started sorting through the Takeout mess yesterday. Thank you so much for sharing!
I agree, it's a good idea to backup your photos using multiple sources.
I used to backup my pictures on Amazon drive years ago and it was just announced that Amazon will be SHUTTING DOWN their drive service at the end of 2023!!
I Tried To Google Takeout and Nothing Happened and I Don’t Know What Going On and I Tried To Save My Pictures and Google Albums Archive.
I wish the metadata didn't change, but I like your download method. I had so many photos I had to break them into individual months instead of quarters. Thanks for taking the time to post your video. I appreciate you.