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How do I download all photos to my computer
I want to download all my Google Photos to my computer and store them there. Other answers to this question are no longer available. How to download all photos to computer or device please. Thanks.
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Google offers a tool called Takeout that is intended to let you easily take all your content and copy to your computer's hard drive. The problem with takeout is that the resulting .zip files are very difficult to navigate. Your photos may be there, but good luck finding particular photos, or restoring to any semblance of order.
Selecting photos/videos using Google Photos and downloading to your computer is easy and effective. Select by clicking on the first photo, then shift-click on the last in a group. Click the 3-dot menu and choose Download all. Problem - you are limited to 500 per download in this procedure.
But, if you first add photos to an album, that 500 limit becomes 20,000. Once photos are in an album you can open the album, click the 3-dot menu and Download all.
Assuming you have more than 20,000 photos, here is my advice
- Select all photos for one year (assuming that is less than 20,000) Note: Although it should be accomplished with one click at the beginning and one shift-click at the end, I have found it takes a while for the photos to load and catch up, so I do several Shift-clicks along the way, continually adding to my selection.
- Click the + to add the selected photos to an album for the year
- Open the album, click the 3-dot menu and choose Download all.
- Repeat for every year
I did this for 2019, my album ended up with approx 7,000 photos/videos, and the resulting .zip file on my computer is 27GB.
Personally, I don't want ALL my pictures on my computer, but I do want my chosen photos/videos backed up to a local hard drive. I make albums each month of my chosen photos and I download them to my computer. Here's a video: https://youtu.be/r1XGwPIFkCM
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@ MaryAnn Thompson 7478
You find some additional info to the excellent advice by Chris in this article.
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In addition:
I have the good habit to let grow my actual yearalbum almost daily - but with selected and edited pictures only. The rest is deleted or archived.
So at the start of the next year that album is ready for downloading and contains no rubbish at all anymore.
It is no problem to create additional thematic and smaller albums for sharing mainly, often temporarily.
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Google offers a tool called Takeout that is intended to let you easily take all your content and copy to your computer's hard drive. The problem with takeout is that the resulting .zip files are very difficult to navigate. Your photos may be there, but good luck finding particular photos, or restoring to any semblance of order.
Selecting photos/videos using Google Photos and downloading to your computer is easy and effective. Select by clicking on the first photo, then shift-click on the last in a group. Click the 3-dot menu and choose Download all. Problem - you are limited to 500 per download in this procedure.
But, if you first add photos to an album, that 500 limit becomes 20,000. Once photos are in an album you can open the album, click the 3-dot menu and Download all.
Assuming you have more than 20,000 photos, here is my advice
- Select all photos for one year (assuming that is less than 20,000) Note: Although it should be accomplished with one click at the beginning and one shift-click at the end, I have found it takes a while for the photos to load and catch up, so I do several Shift-clicks along the way, continually adding to my selection.
- Click the + to add the selected photos to an album for the year
- Open the album, click the 3-dot menu and choose Download all.
- Repeat for every year
I did this for 2019, my album ended up with approx 7,000 photos/videos, and the resulting .zip file on my computer is 27GB.
Personally, I don't want ALL my pictures on my computer, but I do want my chosen photos/videos backed up to a local hard drive. I make albums each month of my chosen photos and I download them to my computer. Here's a video: https://youtu.be/r1XGwPIFkCM
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@ MaryAnn Thompson 7478
You find some additional info to the excellent advice by Chris in this article.
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In addition:
I have the good habit to let grow my actual yearalbum almost daily - but with selected and edited pictures only. The rest is deleted or archived.
So at the start of the next year that album is ready for downloading and contains no rubbish at all anymore.
It is no problem to create additional thematic and smaller albums for sharing mainly, often temporarily.
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Thank you, thank you for the excellent and easy to follow advice from Chris and Rinus. I’ll save your brilliant answers!
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Warning: maybe there is one ugly disturbing factor in these downloads: all pictures (and movies) originating from shares via social media like Whatsapp have got the date of downloading, so they can't be sorted correctly between your normal camera pictures anymore. And that can't be corrected easily, especially if it are many.
The basic mistake is that these media should not be used for serious sharing, because the pictures send are technically murdered by these extremely popular apps, resulting in much less pixels and complete loss of any metadata.
I am curious if Chris has any valuable comment to that worldwide problem not caused by Google?
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@Rinus - I don't have a whole lot to add to that, except to verify that WhatsApp/Facebook etc. do severely downsize photos and strip them of all metadata, including date taken. Here's my video on changing dates on photos: https://geeksontour.com/2020/01/607-gp-change-photo-dates/
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Thanks Chris, you can't do better - at least for your old prints scanned.
But in case of WA c.s. the date & time shown on Google Photos often will be quite near to the actual shooting date & time because they are posted somewhat later on the same day or the next day. So you may get the impression there is no problem, but at downloading to computer, is goes totally wrong.
So in that case you need the Windows method to correct and then you can take the indicated date & time on GP as a reference. Because you can't add the correct timezone in Windows, you can take the timedifference into account if the these pictures were posted in Australia :-)
It all will be a hell of a job, especially when WA is much more popular (and easy) then quality sharing via Google Photos - then there would no such date problem at all and better picture quality also.
Hard to improve mankind.
Stay carefull and all the best together / Rinus
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