We recently talked a lot about leaving Google Photos for other services, mainly because it was a little shocking to see this super useful free storage service become a subscription (after reaching the 15 GB storage limit on all Google services). But that’s the way it is. And if you still prefer Google’s conveniences to, say, paying for iCloud, Apple has a new tool that you can use to copy your photos and videos from its cloud service to your rival’s.
To get started, go to the Apple store Data and privacy website and enter your Apple ID. You will see a screen similar to this:
click on the “Request to transfer a copy of your data” link under the title with the same name. Then, you will be taken to a screen where you can choose the transfer destination (Google Photos) and select whether you just want to transfer your photos, videos or both:
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Next, you’ll be asked to sign in with your Google account and allow the Apple tool to dump data into your photo library:
As part of the copy confirmation process, Apple notes that it can take three to seven days for the transfer to complete – oh, digital life. You will also need enough free space in your Google account for all your files, otherwise, not everything will be copied if, or when, all of your storage becomes full. Apple tries to provide a decent estimate of how much space you will need to free up, but err on the side of “a little more than you need” than “straight on the money” if you need to do a little bit of data pruning in your Google account.
And you’ll also want to make sure you know what’s being transferred before taking drastic action like, say, deleting your Apple account (or at least all of your previously saved photos and videos). Like apple grades:
- The transfer includes copies of photos and videos that you store in iCloud Photos, associated with your Apple ID. Formats include: .jpg, .png, .webp, .gif, some RAW files, .mpg, .mod, .mmv, .tod, .wmv, .asf, .avi, .divx, .mov, .m4v, . 3gp, .3g2, .mp4, .m2t, .m2ts, .mts and .mkv files.
- Only the most recent edition of the photo is transferred and not the original version. Duplicates appear as just a photo.
- Whenever possible, photos are transferred with their albums. Videos are transferred separately, without their albums.
- Once uploaded to Google, the filenames for albums and videos begin with “Copy from”.
- Some content – including shared albums, smart albums, photo stream content, live photos, some metadata and photos and videos stored in other folders or locations – is not transferred in any way.
These are a lot of stipulations, so if you’re looking to make a real archive of all the media you’ve stored on iCloud, you can use Apple’s “Get a copy of your data” option. You can then decide what to upload to Google Photos and what needs to be archived elsewhere. And yes, it means that you will use your bandwidth to make the transfers, but you will have even more control over your data.
That said, if you have free space – or a fictional Google account – it never hurts to have a secondary backup for most of your media.