Download Google Photos to PC since recent Google changes?

Support
1

Hi,

As per recent Google changes, new photos in Google Photos (e.g. taken on your Android phone) will not appear in Google Drive. Is it possible to sync directly with Google Photos, specifically for downloading to PC? Or, if not, can this be implemented?

The Google ‘Backup And Sync’ PC application appears to be a one-way street, for uploading photos only. Essentially, I’d like a local copy of my photos and video - not entrust the only copy my lifelong memories to the corporation!

Thanks for reading,
Mark

2

Hello @openstart52 and welcome to the forum!

Duplicati doesn’t sync or copy files directly. It can only do backups (in a specialized format) of local files.

There do seem to be a lot of people looking for a solution to the problem you’re facing. I’ve seen no great solutions yet, and I don’t think Duplicati is it. Glancing at the Photos Library API , it’s hugely different from Duplicati’s needs for either the source side (computer filesystem) or the destination that gets the backup.

The Overview from the manual says more about what Duplicati does (and how), and what it does not do.

Good luck on your search, but I’m also seeing complaints about that API in general. It may stop solutions.

https://www.reddit.com/r/googlephotos/ has lots of grumbling, and some not-so-great solutions…

3

Thank you for your reply, TS678. I haven’t used Duplicati for a long while and started looking at it again. The link is useful, I’ll study it. I was ‘affeared’ that this is the kind of issue where all the web results are just questions with no solutions. Bye for now, Mark

4

FYI, for anyone interested in this issue, the headline is that Google engineers are ‘currently working’ on a method to sync to Google Drive / PC. Their current solution is to manually download the photos and complain via their Feedback page. Bye for now, Mark

Here is some of my Google Support chat on the topic:-

*Google Support

*Now, since what you want is to sync your photos down to your computer which is only possible if the automatic syncing with Google Drive is functional, we have other options to do that.

*Audrey
*12:09 am

*Right now, the work around to sync your photos down to your PC is to either download all your items from Google Photos send them to drive by using Download your data page or you can download them directly to your device.

*Audrey
*12:09 am

*That’s the best way instead of downloading photos manually which would really takes too much time.

*Mark Major
*12:10 am

*Thank you. Are there plans to provide an automatic sync? I don’t really want to be downloading every month.

*Audrey
*12:12 am

*That’s what our Google engineers is currently working on. One of the reason why the feature is deprecated is because we have received a lot of feedback involving missing photos because of this feature and our Engineers are trying to improve and come up with a much better functionality that won’t compromise our member’s important docs and photos.

*Audrey
*12:12 am

*In the meantime, I would highly recommend that you send us a feedback about this as well aside from the internal feedback I will be submitting.

*Mark Major
*12:13 am

*OK. That sounds promising. I think they should just provide the sync switch, but turn it off by default.

*Audrey
*12:13 am

*We are currently tracking all possible feedback about this update as well.

*Audrey
*12:14 am

*Yes you care correct. With that being said, I’ll send you an email on how you can submit your feedback about this including the workaround that is available as of this time.

*Audrey
*12:14 am

*Would that be fine with you?

*Mark Major
*12:14 am

*OK. That’s very useful for now. Thanks for your time.

*Audrey
*12:15 am

*You’re most welcome and thank you so much for understanding. :smiling_face:

*Audrey
*12:15 am

*Would there be anything else I can help you with today aside from this?

*Audrey
*12:15 am

*I’ll send the email after this chat by the way.

*Mark Major
*12:16 am

*Just one question. Do the photos previously synced to Google Drive now count against my storage allowance, in addition to the copies in Photos?

*Audrey
*12:17 am

*That’s a very good question.

*Mark Major
*12:17 am

*So, am I suddenly using twice the storage for those photos?

*Audrey
*12:18 am

*Please be advised that the items synced before July 10, 2019 will not take up extra storage space. After the change:

*1. If you use Backup & Sync to upload photos & videos to Drive and Photos, they will not take up duplicate storage space. If you delete one copy, the other will continue to take up storage space.
*2. If you manually upload a photo or video from Drive to photos.google.com, in Original Quality, it will take up storage space in both places.
*3. Deleting photos in one service will not delete them in the other.

*Mark Major
*12:18 am

*OK. Got it. Thanks.

*Audrey
*12:18 am

*You’re welcome! Anything else I can help you with today? :smiling_face:

*Mark Major
*12:19 am

*That’s all, thank you.

6

I’ve looked into the Google Photos API with the intent of writing a little command line tool to download new pictures from Google Photos periodically. From what I saw, there is no way to download the original pictures from the API - location metadata is striped out when (according to the docs) and there’s no programmatic way to retrieve the location information in order to put it back in.

The only option I’ve seen that seems to work is downloading images (individually or in batches) manually from the web app. (The most annoying case there is burst photos, because downloading all of the separate burst images requires going into the burst photo and downloading from there - you can’t just select the burst image as part of a batch with other photos or it only downloads the primary image.)