How to download photos and videos to a computer

There are several options to download photos from Google Photos to a computer:

Please note: 

• • Data added in Google Photos (Descriptions or captions added in Picasa Web Albums, changed date/time, locations) are stored in a database and not downloaded when using the download options in Google Photos. If possible it is recommended to add captions or locations and changing dates before you upload to Google Photos. 

• The only method to download both Originals and Edited copies in batch is by using Google Takeout

• Downloading more than one photo at once leads to downloading a ZIP file.

Download a single picture or video

In Google Photos:

OPTION 1:

• 1. Find a picture or video, then left-click to open it

  2. Click "More options" (3 dots icon at the top-right corner)

  3. Click "Download" (Shift+D) or "Download original" (unedited version)

OPTION 2:

• 1. Select a picture or video by hovering over it and clicking the check mark in the top left corner. 

  2. Click "More options" (three dots in the top-right corner), then select "Download" (Shift+D).

OPTION 3:

• 1. Find a picture or video, then left-click to open it

  2. Drag and drop the photo to File Explorer (checked in Windows 10)

In Album Archive

• 1. Open a photo

  2. Click "More options" (three dots in the top-right corner)

  3. Click "Download Photo"

Download up to 500 selected pictures or videos using Google Photos

This method has a limitation of up to 500 pictures and/or videos that can be downloaded at one time. 

If you want to download more at once, you can add them to an album first. Albums do not have that limitation.

• 1. Select multiple photos: see here how to select.

  2. At the top right, click "More options" (three dots in the top-right corner)

  3. Click "Download" (Shift+D)

The pictures will be downloaded in a zip file.

When a photo is edited in Google Photos, only the edited copy will be downloaded.

Download albums using Google Photos

Download your own albums or albums shared with you

• 1. Open the album by left-clicking on the album or on the link to the album

  2. Click "More options" (three dots in the top-right corner)

  3. Click "Download all"

  4. All files in the album will be downloaded in a zip file. See below for how to extract images from a zip file.

  5. When a photo is edited in Google Photos only an edited copy is downloaded

Remarks: 

• 1. while downloading selected photos is limited to 500, much bigger albums can be downloaded. A user signaled albums as big as 40 GB. 

  2. Edit Jan 2021: See https://support.google.com/photos/thread/93196042 : a user signaled that downloads are limited to 2 GB. After I shared the album by "Create link," and opening the album from my browser, I was allowed to download a .zip folder in excess of 2 GB.

  3. when you open an album or shared album it may first show smaller photos (I have seen 1600 pixels). When you download too rapidly you get small copies and the EXIF data are stripped. You may have to wait a few minutes to get the full size with EXIF data. 

Download using Google Takeout

• 1. Go to https://www.google.com/settings/takeout and login using a desktop computer.

  2. Click "Deselect all" to deselect all Google services 

  3. Scroll down to "Google photos" and select it.

  4. The button "Multiple formats" gives some info about what will be downloaded. 

  5. Click "All photo albums included" to get the list of albums. All albums are selected by default.
     When you do not see that text right away, you may have to wait a few minutes.

  6. To select specific albums, click "Deselect all" and select the albums you want to download.
     There are year albums ("Photos from 2020" etc) and your own albums (if not shared!!). Downloading year albums and own albums all will result in duplicates between your albums and the year albums. 

  7. To find albums down the list you can use the Find function of the browser (Ctrl+F). 

  8. Click "OK" to continue. That brings you back to https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout

  9. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Next step"

  10. Choose how you want to get the data ("Customize format")

      1. Choose "Delivery method" (includes Email, Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Box ... ). Select an option to get more info. Note that this will create a ZIP file in all cases, but not all services can UNZIP. Search for example "Google Drive" unzip to find how to unzip in Drive.

      2. "Export type" (One-time or scheduled every 2 months)

      3. "File type" - choose Zip format

      4. "Archive size"

  11. Click "Create archive" or "Link account and create archive" (depends on delivery format you selected)

  12. After awhile, you'll receive an email that says "Your Google data archive is ready"

• • • for example your Zip file is ready to download. Download and unzip the file into a drive that has enough room to store it. The file size could be quite large depending on how many photos are in your collection.

    • or where it is stored, for example "View in OneDrive". In OneDrive or the like you will find a ZIP file with the photos/videos. To my knowledge there is no UNZIP feature in OneDrive.  

Notes

• 1. When a photo is edited in GP the ZIP folder includes both the original and the edited photos.

  2. In takeout you find year albums and albums you created yourself.  Photos that are in your own albums are also in the year albums. Thus when you download everything using Takeout there may be duplicates between the year albums and your own albums. 

  3. Photos added by others to a collaborative album will NOT be included in the downloaded album, even when they are added to your account, unless you replace them by your copies. But they are included in the year albums.

  4. The ZIP folder also includes .json files with data (for example descriptions, locations) added in Google Photos. Google does not provide any tools to add them to the photos, but EXIFTool and others are able to do it. 
     See "How to preserve Descriptions, Locations and Date/time added in Google Photos" further below.

Third party sofware

Not tried. Use at your own risk. 

https://github.com/mattd/google-photos-downloader
https://github.com/makingglitches/GooglePhotoDownload 

How to get a real backup of your "mobile photos" 

Photos from mobile devices can be synced with Google Photos, but that is not a safe backup:

• • Two-way syncing propagates erroneous deletions. Every week users ask to recover the photos they deleted from trash accidentally, or which they do not even find in trash. 

  • Once you remove the device copy (to save storage) there is only one (working) copy left.

Since the link between Google Photos and Google Drive stopped working in July 2019, the only automatic way offered by Google no longer does work. See https://blog.google/products/photos/simplifying-google-photos-and-google-drive/ 

There however are a few other methods:

• • You can manually download photos from Google Photos to your computer by one of the methods described above:

    • You can regularly download the recently added from the timeline or from https://photos.google.com/search/_tra_ ("Recently added", also available via the "Explore" tab in the web app)

    • When you add photos to albums you can download new albums from Google Photos or via Takeout

  • Some users suggested third party software (not checked):

    • https://pypi.org/project/gphotos-sync

    • https://github.com/hardikvasa/google-images-download 

• It is safer and easier to have an automatic backup

  • You can directly upload from a mobile device to a second cloud service like OneDrive, iCloud, Dropbox or others. You can use this as a temporary backup, and download to a computer (for example when storage gets full), or pay for more storage. 

  • You can even use Google Photos:

    • Create a second Google account (if you don't already have one)

    • Share your library with that account and accept the share.
      Note that you can share with only one other account.

    • Activate the option to add (save) photos to the library of the second account.
      Your photos are now safe because deletions in account 1 do not sync to account 2

    • Notes:

      • Only photos deleted in account 1 do count for storage in account 2.
        When account 1 stops sharing all photos will count for storage. 

      • You can use third-party software like  MultCloud to transfer to another cloud (and download from there).
        A user signaled https://pypi.org/project/gphotos-sync/ to automatically download to a computer. 

See also 

Google Photos is NOT a "Backup" of Your Photos
Transferring Pictures from Smartphone to Computer 

ZIP files

1. After downloading a .zip file using any of the methods above, your browser prompts you to save the .zip file. You can also rename the zip at this time

2. Click "Save" and specify a location to download

3. Unzip the zip file

   1. In Windows Explorer, right click the zip file, click "Extract All" then "Extract" 

   2. When unzipping is finished, you may delete the zip file (but check before you delete)

How to preserve Descriptions, Locations and Date/time added in Google Photos

In Google Photos, "Captions" added before uploading are now shown as "Other" in the info of a photo. They always remain part of the photo. 

"Descriptions" added in Google Photos are lost when downloading from Google Photos, but transferred by other methods (Partner sharing, sharing albums).   

When using Google Takeout, a .json file in the downloaded ZIP file includes info about the added description, location, and changed date. There are tools able to merge .json and image:

• • EXIFTool
    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42024255/bulk-join-json-with-jpg-from-google-takeout
    To add a description of the file, the appropriate placement for this would be IPTC:Caption-Abstract, XMP:Description, and EXIF:ImageDescription. You could copy these with:
    '-Caption-Abstract<Description', -Description, or '-ImageDescription<Description'
    https://github.com/mattwilson1024/google-photos-exif  (2020)
    How to merge image with his .json file (Google Photos takeout)  - Exiftool forum

  • MetadataFixer can fix EXIF Metadata in pictures and videos when exporting from Google Takeout. There is a demo version and a paid version: https://metadatafixer.com/.  See user comment here.

  • How to batch merge Google Takeout photos with json files on Mac
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If you know other ways of downloading pictures and video from Google products, please let us know in the Google Photos Help Community: https://support.google.com/photos/community