How to Move Away from Google Photos - Step by Step

Why People Are Leaving Google Photos

Google Photos used to be the obvious choice. Free unlimited storage, solid search, and it just worked. Then in 2021 they killed the free unlimited tier and started counting photos against your 15 GB Google storage limit. The same 15 GB that's shared with Gmail and Google Drive.

That was the first domino. For a lot of people, the storage squeeze was enough to start looking elsewhere. But it's not just about price. Google scans your photos with AI for features like face recognition, object detection, and memory creation. Their AI training practices have raised legitimate concerns about how your personal photos are being used.

Privacy policy changes keep coming too. Google's terms of service give them broad rights to use your content for service improvement, which is vague enough to make privacy-conscious users uncomfortable. If you care about GDPR compliance or want your photos stored in the EU specifically, Google isn't going to work for you.

And then there's the ecosystem lock-in. If you have 50,000 photos in Google Photos, switching feels impossible. Albums, shared links, memories, face tags. It all lives in Google's world. But here's the thing: the longer you wait, the more locked in you get. If you're thinking about leaving, now is better than later.

Before You Start - What to Know

A few things to set expectations before you dive in.

• Google Takeout exports everything. If you have 40,000 photos, you're downloading 40,000 photos. This can be 50-200 GB depending on your library. Make sure you have enough disk space.
• The export includes metadata. Each photo gets a companion JSON file with location data, timestamps, descriptions, and other metadata. This is actually great because it means you don't lose context when you move.
• The process takes time. Google needs hours (sometimes days) to prepare your export. Downloading it depends on your internet speed. Uploading to your new platform takes time too. Plan for a weekend project, not a lunch break task.
• You don't have to delete Google Photos after. Keep it as a backup while you settle into your new platform. There's no rush to burn bridges. Use both services in parallel until you're confident everything transferred correctly.

Step 1 - Export Your Photos via Google Takeout

Google Takeout is Google's official data export tool. It lets you download a copy of your data from any Google service, including Photos.

How to run your export

• Go to takeout.google.com and sign in with your Google account.
• Click "Deselect all" first (Takeout selects every Google service by default). Then scroll down and select only Google Photos.
• You can export all albums or pick specific ones. If you only want certain albums, click "All photo albums included" and deselect the ones you don't need.
• Click "Next step" and choose your export settings:

• Delivery method: Send download link via email (simplest option).
• Frequency: Export once (unless you want recurring exports).
• File type: .zip (most compatible) or .tgz.
• File size: 10 GB is recommended. If your library is larger, the export splits into multiple zip files. Using 10 GB chunks means fewer files to manage while keeping each download manageable.

Click "Create export" and wait. Google will send you an email when your export is ready. For small libraries (under 10 GB), this usually takes a few hours. For large libraries (50 GB+), it can take a day or two.

Once you get the email, download all the zip files to your computer. Keep them in one folder. You'll need to extract them in the next step.

Step 2 - Understand What You Downloaded

When you unzip your export, the folder structure can look confusing at first. Here's what you're looking at.

Folder structure

Your export is organized into folders, one per album. If a photo wasn't in any album, it goes into folders named by date (like "Photos from 2023"). Each folder contains your actual photos plus a JSON metadata file for each photo.

JSON metadata files

Every photo has a matching .json file (e.g., "IMG_1234.jpg.json"). These contain the photo's title, description, GPS coordinates, creation timestamp, and other metadata. Some migration tools can read these files to preserve your metadata. Don't delete them.

Original vs. edited versions

If you edited photos in Google Photos, the export includes the edited version as the main file. The original is sometimes included too, with "-edited" or"-original" in the filename. Check a few photos to understand which version you want to keep.

The weird folder names

Google Takeout sometimes creates folders with truncated or garbled names, especially for albums with long titles or special characters. Don't worry about it. The photos inside are fine. You can rename the folders before uploading to your new platform.

Step 3 - Choose Your New Home

This is the big decision. There's no single best answer because it depends on what matters to you. Here's how the main options break down.

Viallo - Best for sharing, EU-hosted

If sharing photos with family and friends is a big part of how you use your photo library, Viallo is the strongest option. Albums shared via link, no account required for viewers, automatic location organization, and all data stored in the EU. The free tier gives you 2 albums and 200 photos to test with. Check the full Google Photos vs. Viallo comparison for a detailed breakdown.

Ente - Best for end-to-end encryption

If privacy is your absolute top priority, Ente encrypts your photos before they leave your device. Nobody, including Ente, can see your photos. The tradeoff is that features like server-side search and automatic organization are limited because the server can't read your files. Good for privacy maximalists.

iCloud Photos - Best for iPhone users

If your whole family uses iPhones, iCloud Photos is deeply integrated and just works. Shared albums are easy to set up. The downside is that sharing with Android users or anyone outside the Apple ecosystem is clunky, and you're trading one big tech company for another.

Proton Drive - Best for full privacy

Proton Drive offers encrypted cloud storage from the same team behind ProtonMail. It's not a photo platform though. There's no gallery view, no albums, no sharing features. It's just encrypted file storage. Good if you want a private backup, not great if you want to browse or share your photos.

Self-hosted (Immich, PhotoPrism) - Most control, most work

Running your own photo server gives you complete control over your data. Immich is the closest open-source alternative to Google Photos. But you need a server, you need to maintain it, and you need to handle backups yourself. This is a great option for technical users who enjoy that kind of project.

Step 4 - Upload to Your New Service

You have your exported photos and you've picked a new platform. Now comes the actual migration.

Upload by album

Don't dump everything into one upload. Create albums on your new platform that match your Google Photos albums, then upload the contents of each folder. This preserves your organization and makes the migration much easier to verify.

Preserve folder structure

If your new platform supports drag-and-drop upload, you can often drag an entire folder and it'll create an album with that folder's name. This saves a lot of manual album creation.

Check metadata transferred

After uploading a batch, open a few photos and check that the date, location, and other metadata came through. Most platforms read EXIF data from the image files directly, so this usually works. If you notice missing dates or locations, the metadata might be in the companion JSON files rather than embedded in the image.

Verify photo counts

Count the photos in each album on both platforms. If Google Photos says an album had 247 photos and your new album has 245, something got missed. Better to catch it now than discover it after deleting Google Photos.

Spot-check quality

Open a few photos at full resolution on your new platform. Zoom in. Compare against the same photo in Google Photos. Make sure your new cloud storage is preserving the original quality and not re-compressing your files.

Step 5 - Verify and Clean Up

You've uploaded everything. Now take a breath and verify before you touch your Google account.

Don't delete Google Photos immediately

Live with both services for at least a month. Use your new platform as your primary photo home. Upload new photos there. Share from there. If after a month you're happy and everything looks right, then you can think about removing photos from Google.

Verify everything transferred

Go through your most important albums on both platforms side by side. Check that special photos (weddings, births, trips) all made it. Look for albums you might have missed. Check shared albums too because Google Takeout sometimes handles them differently.

Keep your Google Takeout export as a backup

Store the downloaded zip files on an external hard drive. Even after you're fully migrated, having a local backup of your entire photo library is smart. Hard drives are cheap. Losing 10 years of photos is not.

Gradually transition

Start using your new platform for new photos right away. Update your shared album links with family and friends. Move your workflow over gradually rather than trying to switch everything in one day. After a few weeks, your new platform will feel like home.

Frequently Asked Questions