If you’ve used an iPhone, you probably know that it’s easy to automatically back up your content using iCloud. However, if you decide to switch to another service, things will not necessarily be easy. Fortunately, Apple just made it that much easier by providing a tool that allows you to natively export your photos and videos from iCloud to Google Photos.
There are a few prerequisites for this process, including having enough storage in your Google Photos account and enabling two-factor authentication on your Apple account, if you haven’t already done so. After starting the transfer process, it takes three to seven days to complete, which Apple says is necessary to verify that the request was made by you and to complete the data transfer. However, if you add or delete files during the process, Apple says there is a chance that they will not be copied to Google Photos, so it’s best to add them manually when you’re done.
Although the images are kept in their albums, the videos are not, and only the most recent version of a file is copied to Google Photos. Smart albums, Live Photos and photo stream content cannot be transferred to Google Photos. Likewise, some metadata and RAW files may be lost when copying files. Finally, duplicates appear only once, which helps to save space in the destination folder, but can be annoying if you do it on purpose. Once uploaded to Google Photos, the file names for albums and videos start with “Copy from”, so you’ll have to spend some time renaming them if it’s a legal freak like me.
The service is currently available in Australia, Canada, the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. To transfer your photos, go to privacy.apple.com and select Transfer a copy of your data.