Transferring your iCloud photos to Google Photos just got a lot easier

Moving your iCloud photo library to Google Photos has just gotten a lot easier. Apple has released a new tool that now lets you transfer your photos and videos stored in iCloud to the Google service with a few clicks. While it was always possible to upload your local photos to Google Photos through the official iOS app, it wasn’t easy to migrate your existing iCloud library to Google. The only option the user had was to download all their photos manually on their iPhone or Mac device and then upload them to the Photos.

This is where Apple’s new service (via The Verge) comes into play. If you wish to move your media to Google Photos, you can visit privacy.apple.com and sign in with your Apple ID. From there, you’ll have to select “Transfer a copy of your data” and follow the on-screen prompts. The service will display a total count of photos and videos stored in your iCloud account as well as how much space they are using before you initiate the transfer. Apple says the transfer can take anywhere between three days to seven days. Users will be notified via email notification when the transfer is complete.

Your existing iCloud library will remain intact as the service will just transfer a copy of your photos and videos. Supported file formats include .jpg, png, .webp, .gif, some RAW files, .3gp, .mp4, .mkv and more. Apple says things like shared albums, smart albums, live photos, some metadata, photo stream content won’t be transferred at all.

The photo transfer service is currently available to Apple users in the U.S., Australia, Canada, the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, and the U.K.

One of the major attractions of Google Photos is free unlimited storage of “high quality” photos. However, Google recently announced they’ll no longer offer that benefit and that starting June 1, 2021, all newly uploaded photos and videos will be counted towards the 15GB storage of your Google account.

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