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Thursday, March 28, 2024

How to Back Up and Move Your Photos Between Services

Most of us now have our digital photos and videos automatically backed up to the cloud. It means they can be accessed from any device, and are kept safe and sound should something happen to your smartphone or laptop.

What happens, though, when your photo storage platform of choice changes its features, or its prices, or goes out of business completely? It's vital to have an exit strategy in place, just in case—if only to keep your precious files backed up somewhere else.

We can't cover the process for every service out there, but we can give you guidelines for five of the most popular ones. If you're using something different, you should be able to find export options somewhere in the interface.

Google Photos

Google actually makes it relatively easy to get your stuff downloaded and moved elsewhere, whether that's emails in Gmail or images you've uploaded to Google Photos. With the free storage tier disappearing next year, you might be looking to move your pictures and videos to another service, and with Google Photos it's not difficult to do.

To get at your files, go to your Google Account page on the web. Once you've signed in, click Data & personalization, and then Download your data. You'll see all the various Google apps and services listed, so just tick the Google Photos option, and use the All photo albums included button if you only want to download certain albums.

Click Next step to set some export options (you can save the exported files to disk or add them to Google Drive, for example), and then click Create export. If you've chosen the Send download link via email option, you'll be sent an archive of your photos and videos over email.

Apple Photos

Apple is very keen that you should use its photo storage service—and its music service, and its mapping service, and its messaging service—rather than anyone else's, and there aren't really any options to get your files out of Apple Photos on iCloud like there are in Google Photos. You can download individual photos and videos from iCloud on the web, but that's likely to take you a long, long time.

Your best approach here is to install the app you want to transfer your photos and videos to on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac, and forget about the intermediate step of downloading all your files to a computer. You need to make sure all your photos and videos are stored on your device of choice though, not in the cloud. To do this, go to iOS Settings and choose Photos then Download and Keep Originals, or open Photos on macOS and choose Photos, Preferences, iCloud, and Download Originals to this Mac.

If you know all your photos and videos are on your computer or mobile device, you can move them somewhere else by installing the relevant app: Dropbox for iOS or macOS, for example, or OneDrive for iOS or macOS. If you have access to a Windows computer, you can use iCloud for Windows to sync all your files to the local hard drive before uploading them somewhere else.

Microsoft OneDrive

Like Apple Photos and unlike Google Photos, OneDrive doesn't have a mass export tool to download all of your photos and videos in one go. You can select and download bunches of files via the web interface or the mobile app, but if you've got thousands of pictures and video clips to transfer, it's not really practical to transfer them all like this.

If you're using OneDrive for your files, we're assuming you have access to a Windows laptop or desktop. You can make sure all of your photos and videos are synced locally to this computer by opening OneDrive in File Explorer, then right-clicking on the folders holding your images and videos and choosing Always keep on this device. You can then install another app—Dropbox, Google Backup and Sync, iCloud for Windows—and point it towards these OneDrive folders.

If you use a Mac instead of a Windows computer, use the OneDrive client for macOS to get all of your photo and video folders synced to your local drive instead. Once the sync has completed, you can move the pictures somewhere else (choose File and Import to load them into the Photos app and iCloud on your Mac, for instance).

Dropbox

While Dropbox doesn't offer a mass downloading tool for all your photos and videos, it does at least let you download entire folders at once through the web interface: Click the three dots next to the folder you want to save to disk, then Download, and all of its contents can be saved to your computer in an archived zip file, ready to be moved somewhere else.

If you have the Dropbox client installed on your Windows or macOS computer then all of your photos and videos might well be already saved to disk anyway. Open the Dropbox app, click on your username (bottom left), then choose Preferences and Sync to make sure the folders you need (with your photos and videos in them) are currently being synced to the hard drive.

Once your images and video clips are safely saved to your computer, you can get them moved somewhere else: You can move them into the Photos app on a Mac for example (File then Import) or install the Google Backup and Sync desktop program and get them sent to Google Photos.

Facebook

If you need to get your photos and videos out of Facebook, open up the Facebook Settings page on the web, and choose Your Facebook information. Click View next to Download your information, and you're then able to see everything Facebook holds on you: From all the comments you've ever made on the social network to all the Facebook events that you've ever committed to.

Tick the Photos and videos option, and make sure the Media quality option is set to High, then choose Create File. Once Facebook is done collecting all your files, you'll be emailed a download link—this link will give you a copy of all your photos and videos that you can download to your computer, ready to be moved somewhere else.

Back on the Settings page, you can also click Your Facebook information and then View next to Transfer a copy of your photos and videos: The subsequent screen lets you transfer your files directly to another cloud service, without any downloading in between. Dropbox and Google Photos are two of the services supported.

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