Apple helps you switch from iCloud Photos to Google Photos

Why is Apple doing this?

It may seem like an illogical move for Apple to release a special tool to transfer your photos to a competing service. But there’s a reason for it. In the EU, it has been mandatory since 2018 to be able to easily take data with you if you want to leave a specific provider. You can request your data from Apple, view it and transfer it to another service. For photos, Apple specifically gives you the option to transfer photos directly from iCloud Photos to Google Photos. Below you can read how this works.

• Why?
• Advantages and disadvantages
• Preparation
• This way you can switch
• Suitable formats

Benefits of switching to Google Photos

There may be a number of reasons for switching to Google Photos, for example:

• In addition to your iPhone, you also have an Android device and are looking for something that works on multiple platforms.
• You need more storage space than iCloud’s standard 5GB and don’t want to pay.
• You don’t want to be 100% dependent on Apple.
• You find Google Photos more useful and/or better.

By the way, it is good to know that Google Photos will limit storage space from June 2021. It is then no longer possible to store an unlimited amount of photos in average quality. For many people it will mean that you can use 15GB of storage, unless you have more storage available through school or work.

Cons of transferring to Google Photos

Here are some reasons not to switch:

• Google’s privacy conditions are generally less well regulated than Apple’s.
• You will lose features such as retrospectives, shared albums, smart albums and the like.
• You can lose some metadata such as location.
• Live Photos and some RAW photos cannot be carried.
• Only the final edit of the photo is transferred, not the original.
• Duplicate photos are shown as one photo.
• The album is also included for photos, but not for videos.
• Google Photos has a limit of 20,000 photos per album.
• Files and folders are given the addition ‘Copy of…’ in the name.

However, Google has its own variants of retrospectives and also analyzes the content of your photos to quickly search for photos of horses or bicycles, for example. Furthermore, your iCloud photo album will not be completely erased. Only a copy is made. You can then still decide to delete the iCloud photos (semi-manually). There’s no button in iCloud Photos to select and delete all photos, but you can quickly select multiple photos in the Photos app.

Before you can transfer photos to Google Photos

Before you can start you must meet the following conditions:

• You must use iCloud Photos to store your photos.
• Your Apple ID must use two-factor authentication.
• You need a Google account with sufficient storage.

Here’s how to transfer iCloud Photos to Google Photos

If you are ready to get started, take the following steps:

1. Go to Apple’s Data & Privacy page and log in.
2. Click on the second option, Transfer a copy of your data.
3. Select Google Photos from the drop-down menu.
4. Choose whether you want to transfer photos, videos, or both. You also immediately see how much storage space you need with Google Photos, in this case 145GB.
5. Click Continue.
6. Confirm that you have enough storage.
7. A pop-up will appear. Choose the desired Google account.
8. Allow Apple to add photos and/or videos to your Google Photos account.
9. Everything OK? Click Allow.

It may take 3 to 7 days before the transfer is successful.

Which photo formats are transferred?

It’s good to know that the transfer includes more than just jpg files. The following formats are transferred:

• .jpg
• .png
• .webp
• .gif
• some RAW files
• .mpg
• .mod
• .mmv
• .tod
• .wmv
• .asf
• .avi
• .divx
• .mov
• .m4v
• .3gp
• .3g2
• .mp4
• .m2t
• .m2ts
• .mts
• .mkv

Currently, transferring iCloud Photos to Google Photos is the only option. This has been the case since this feature was introduced in 2021. We had thought that more online photo storage services would be added, such as Dropbox and Flickr, but that has not happened yet.

If you want to export your photos to another service, you can also do that manually. We have a guide on backing up photos on your iPhone (intended for people who don’t use iCloud Photo Library, but just store everything locally) and a tip on making an additional backup of your iCloud Photo Library.