Google Photos Locked Down Its API - What It Means for Your Photo Library

What happened to the Google Photos API

On March 31, 2025, Google shut down the Library API - the part of the Google Photos API that let third-party apps access your full photo library with your permission. Apps that previously could scan your entire library, sync photos, or migrate your collection to another service suddenly lost that ability.

The replacement? Something called the Photos Picker API. Instead of granting an app access to your library, you now have to manually select individual photos or albums through a Google-controlled picker interface. Want to migrate 50,000 photos? You'd need to select them in batches through the picker. It's technically possible but practically unusable for large libraries.

Google framed this as a privacy improvement. They said the old API gave apps too much access and that the picker model is more secure because users explicitly choose what to share. That's not wrong on the surface - but the timing and implementation tell a different story.

Why Google really locked down the API

Google's official explanation is about user privacy and security. And sure, there's a legitimate argument that apps shouldn't have blanket access to your photo library. But let's be honest about the other factors at play.

Keeping users locked in

The old Library API was the primary way people migrated photos away from Google Photos. Services like Multcloud, Photomyne, and various backup tools used it to pull entire libraries out of Google's ecosystem. By killing that API, Google made it significantly harder to leave.

This is vendor lock-in by design. Google isn't preventing you from leaving - they'll point to Google Takeout as proof. But they've made the process so painful that most people won't bother. The difference between "click a button and your photos sync to another service" and "request an export, wait days, download zip files, then re-upload everything" is the difference between users actually switching and users staying put.

Protecting AI training data

Google uses your photos to train AI models. That's in their terms of service. Third-party apps that could bulk-access libraries were essentially reading the same data that Google uses for its AI pipeline. From Google's perspective, why let competitors access training data that's sitting on Google's servers?

I covered this in detail in our article about how Google Photos uses your pictures for AI training. The API lockdown fits neatly into a strategy of maximizing the value Google extracts from user-uploaded content while minimizing what third parties can do with it.

The privacy argument has holes

If this were purely about privacy, Google could have added more granular permissions to the existing API - read-only access, rate limiting, clearer consent flows. Instead, they chose the nuclear option: remove library-level access entirely. The picker API isn't a privacy improvement for users who want to export their own data. It's a barrier.

How this affects you

If you just use Google Photos to take pictures and occasionally share an album, you probably won't notice anything. The impact hits when you try to do something beyond Google's walled garden.

Backup and sync tools are broken

Apps that automatically backed up your Google Photos library to another cloud service or local storage stopped working. If you were using a tool to keep a mirror of your Google Photos on a NAS or another platform, that sync is dead. You'd need to manually select photos through the picker, which defeats the purpose of automatic backup.

Migration got much harder

Switching from Google Photos to another platform used to be straightforward - authorize the new service, let it pull your library. Now you're stuck with Google Takeout or manual selection through the picker. For someone with tens of thousands of photos, this is a multi-day process instead of a few clicks.

Photo management apps lost features

Apps that offered cross-platform photo management - organizing photos across Google, iCloud, and local storage - can no longer read your Google library. Some of these apps have shut down entirely because their core feature no longer works.

Developers walked away

Many independent developers who built tools around the Google Photos API have simply abandoned their projects. The new picker API is too limited to support the features users actually wanted. When a platform pulls the rug on developers, it sends a message: don't build on Google unless you're comfortable with them changing the rules whenever they want.

How to get your photos out of Google Photos

Despite the API restrictions, you can still export your photos. It's just more manual than it used to be. Here's how:

Google Takeout (the main option)

Google Takeout is Google's data export tool. Go to takeout.google.com, select Google Photos, and request an export. Google will package your entire library into zip files that you can download.

A few things to know about Takeout:

• It's slow - Large libraries can take hours or even days to prepare
• Downloads are split into chunks - You'll get multiple zip files, usually 2GB each
• Metadata is separated - Photo metadata (dates, locations) is exported as separate JSON files rather than embedded in the images. This means if you just upload the photos elsewhere, you might lose your dates and locations
• Album structure may be lost - Albums export as folder names, but the relationship between photos and albums can get messy, especially for photos in multiple albums
• Links expire - Download links are only valid for a limited time, so don't wait too long

Fixing Takeout metadata

The metadata issue is the biggest pain point with Takeout. There's an open-source tool called google-photos-takeout-helper that can merge the JSON metadata files back into the image EXIF data. It's a command-line tool, so you need some technical comfort, but it works well. Without this step, your photos might show up with the wrong dates when you upload them to a new service.

Manual download from the web

You can also go to photos.google.com, select photos manually, and download them. This works for small batches but is impractical for large libraries. Google limits how many photos you can select at once, so you'd be doing this in rounds of 500.

Where to put your exported photos

Once you've got your photos out of Google, you need somewhere to put them. A few options worth considering:

• Another cloud service - Compare your options here. Viallo, iCloud, or Ente depending on your priorities
• A NAS - Synology with Synology Photos or Immich for self-hosted management
• External hard drive - Simple, cheap, no monthly fees. Just make sure you have two copies in case one fails

Why open platforms matter for your photos

The Google Photos API lockdown is a textbook example of why platform dependence is dangerous. You uploaded your photos to Google. You organized them. You relied on third-party tools to manage them. Then Google changed the rules and broke everything.

This isn't unique to Google. Apple's iCloud makes it difficult to access your photos outside the Apple ecosystem. Amazon could change Prime Photos terms anytime. Every platform that controls both your storage and your access points is a vendor lock-in risk.

What to look for in a photo platform

After watching Google pull this move, I'd argue these features matter more than most people realize:

• Easy data export - Can you download your entire library with metadata intact? How long does it take?
• Standard file formats - Are your photos stored as regular JPEG/PNG/HEIC files, or in some proprietary format?
• No API lock-in - Does the platform support open standards and interoperability?
• Metadata preservation - Are EXIF data, dates, and GPS coordinates kept in the files themselves?
• Transparent terms - Does the platform clearly state what it does and doesn't do with your data?

How Viallo handles this

At Viallo, photos are stored as original files with full metadata preserved. There's no compression, no format conversion, no stripping of EXIF data. Your photos go in exactly as they come out. If you decide to leave, you can download your entire library - albums intact, metadata included.

We store everything on EU servers (Cloudflare R2), don't use your photos for AI training, and don't scan your content. The GDPR compliance isn't just a checkbox - it's how the platform is built. Your photos are your data, and you should be able to take them wherever you want.

The Google API situation reinforced something I already believed: you should never be trapped on a platform because leaving is too hard. Good platforms make it easy to stay because the product is good, not because the exit door is locked.

Frequently Asked Questions