How to Download All Your Photos in Google Photos and Keep Their Metadata

Switching between services that hold most of your data, like email providers or file/photo syncing services, can be a hassle. Thankfully, the EU’s GDPR has led to many services offering data export options. This means you can now easily download your data from platforms like Facebook Messenger, Google Drive, or Google Photos. In the case of Google Photos, this is a nice addition. After all, when Google Photos stopped providing unlimited storage for photo backups, storage management became quite complicated. It left many Gmail users without storage space in the blink of an eye, and it’s hard to manage that storage without removing some files from Google Photos. With this option, you can move your files to another service or perhaps use old-school backups on external drives.

For Google Photos you can use: Google Takeout (takeout.google.com) to export your data. From here, you can pick and choose the data you want to export, and it will arrive as .zip files. Now, we’ve previously covered how to get all your photos from Google Drive, but it can be a little tricky because Google’s process keeps photo metadata separate. But don’t worry—we’ll walk you through exporting your photo data with Google Takeout, making sure to keep all that metadata intact (via ).

How to Export Your Data from Google Photos?

Exporting your photos from Google Photos is simple. Just follow these steps:

1. Go to Google TakeoutVisit: takeout.google.com and sign in with your Google account.
2. Select Your Data: Once you log in, you'll see a list of Google services. Click “Select All” to start fresh.
3. Select Google PhotosScroll down and check the box next to Google Photos. By default, this will select all your photo albums, but you can click “Include all photo albums” to select specific albums or years if needed.
4. Structure Your Export: Scroll down and click “Next Step”. You'll need to choose how you want to get your files. The default options will email you a link to download your data and save it as .zip files. You can also adjust the file size for these .zip's; unless you're exporting a large amount of data, it's usually a good idea to keep it at 2GB.
5. Create Export: Click “Create export.” Google will process your request and email you a link to download your files when they're ready.
6. Download and Edit: Download your .zip files and keep them in a separate folder for now. Don't merge or delete the original .zip's yet; they're good to have in case you need to redo something.

And that’s it! You have successfully exported your data from Google Photos. Now let’s move on to how to get your metadata and merge it with your files.

How to Merge Your Exported Photos and Metadata

After exporting your photos from Google Takeout, you may notice that your images are missing metadata while they’re still there. Each photo comes with a corresponding .json file that contains its metadata, but Google separates them on export. To fix this and merge your metadata into your photos, follow these steps:

1. Get GPTH (Google Photos Takeout Helper): This tool combines photos and metadata and is available on GitHub. It works on macOS, Linux, and Windows.
2. Download GPTH: Go to GPTH Versions page and download the binary for your operating system (e.g. gpth-macos (for macOS).
3. Prepare Your Files: Place the downloaded GPTH binary file in the directory where the Google Takeout folder you extracted is located.
4. Set Permissions (macOS/Linux):
   • Open a terminal and navigate to the directory.
   • To run sudo chmod +x gpth-macos (or gpth-linux (for Linux).

   For macOS Users:

   • Enable Rosetta emulation and bypass Gatekeeper as follows:

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     softwareupdate --install-rosetta
xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine gpth-macos


5. Run GPTH:
   • Open WindowsDouble click the .exe file to run it.
   • Open macOS/Linuxrun from terminal:

     or

6. Follow the instructions:
   • Select your “Package” folder (where your exported data is located).
   • Select a destination folder for the merged files.
   • Decide whether you want to organize the output in a single folder or by year/month.
   • The default option for processing albums usually works best. If you run into problems, try the duplicate-copy option for better reliability, although it does use more disk space.
7. Check Your Files: Once the process is complete, navigate to your destination folder. You should see your photos and metadata together, ready to be transferred to another photo management service!

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