How to Transfer Google Photos from One Account to Another: A Comprehensive Guide

Changing your primary Gmail address or consolidating multiple Google accounts? Transferring your Google Photos is often a crucial step. However, many users discover that moving Google Photos isn’t as straightforward as they initially expect. If you’re looking for a seamless way to transfer your precious photo memories, you’ve come to the right place.

This comprehensive guide will delve into why automated solutions often fall short when it comes to Google Photos migration. We’ll outline two reliable methods for transferring your Google Photos to another account, ensuring you don’t lose any cherished memories in the process. We’ll also touch upon transferring your Google Drive files for a complete account migration strategy.

In this article, we will cover:

Why Automated Google Photos Transfers Are Often Not Possible

While Google Photos and Google Drive share the same Google account storage, they’ve been distinct services since July 2019. This separation means that migrating Google Photos is handled differently from Google Drive content. You might assume that automated migration tools would handle Google Photos alongside other Google services, but this is often not the case.

Directly transferring photos from Google Photos to Google Drive is no longer a quick option, and standard Google Drive migration tools typically exclude Google Photos. Therefore, if you’re moving to a new Google account, Google Photos requires a separate migration process from your Google Drive files.

The ability of automated tools to transfer Google Photos is currently significantly limited. Migration services like VaultMe rely on Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to facilitate content transfer between accounts. APIs are essentially digital messengers that allow different applications to communicate and exchange data. While Google provides robust APIs for Gmail, Google Drive, Contacts, and Calendar, enabling smooth transfers of large amounts of data, the Google Photos API presents limitations.

Although Google has offered APIs for Google Photos for several years, they impose strict limits on the number of operations an automated tool can perform within a 24-hour period across all users. This shared quota means that as more users attempt to transfer their Google Photos simultaneously, and as the total volume of content being transferred increases, the transfer speed for each user slows down dramatically, often to the point of becoming unusable. This can turn a seemingly simple transfer into a potentially endless process, causing significant frustration, particularly for users with deadlines for their account migration.

To maintain a positive user experience and avoid these unreliable transfer scenarios, VaultMe, and many similar services, do not currently offer automated Google Photos transfer. Despite the manual methods having their own limitations, they remain the most dependable way to migrate your Google Photos content to a different account.

Let’s explore the two primary methods for migrating Google Photos: transferring without downloading and re-uploading, and transferring by downloading and re-uploading.

Option 1. Transfer Google Photos to Another Google Account Without Downloading

This method allows you to create copies of your photos from your original account in your new account. Crucially, these copies become independent. Ownership is not transferred, meaning your original photos remain untouched in your source account.

The process involves linking your accounts through sharing, then saving the shared content to your destination account. Once completed and verified, you can then choose to delete photos from your source account if desired.

Importantly, the metadata of your photos, such as dates, camera details, and other relevant information, will be preserved during this transfer.

It’s vital to note that while shared photos can be saved to the destination account, albums (folders) will not be copied automatically. If your photos are organized into albums, you’ll need to manually recreate these albums in your destination account after saving the photos, as detailed in Step 4 below.

Step-by-Step Guide: Transfer Google Photos via Re-sharing

Step 1. Verify Sufficient Storage in Your Destination Account.

Initially, the copied photos will not consume storage in your destination account. However, once you delete the original photos from your source account, or if your source account becomes inactive, the copied photos will then count towards your storage quota in your destination Google account. Therefore, ensuring you have enough free storage in your destination account before initiating the copy process is essential.

To prepare for the transfer:

Check Google Photos Storage Usage in Your Source Account: For personal accounts, simply go to the Google Storage page.

Alt text: Checking Google Photos storage usage in a Google account, highlighting the storage breakdown for Google Drive, Gmail, and Photos.

If your account is managed by an administrator (e.g., a work or school account), navigate to My account > “Payments and subscriptions” > “Account storage.”
Confirm Free Storage in Your Destination Account: Ensure your destination account has at least the same amount of free storage as used by Google Photos in your source account. Remember that Google Photos shares storage with Gmail and Google Drive, so consider total usage.

If you lack sufficient free storage, you have options: purchase additional storage for your destination account, or selectively copy only essential albums or photos.

Step 2. Share Photos with Your Destination Account (Partner Sharing).

Enable Partner Sharing: On your computer, log in to your source Google account and go to Google Photos > “Settings” > “Partner Sharing.”
Choose “All photos” and click “Next.”

Alt text: Enabling partner sharing in Google Photos settings, with “All photos” selected and the email address field highlighted for adding a partner.
Enter Destination Account Email: Add the email address associated with your destination Google account.
Send Invitation.
Accept Invitation in Destination Account: Open the email sent to your destination email address and click to accept the invitation.

Alt text: Accepting a Google Photos partner sharing invitation by clicking the “Accept Invitation” button in an email.
Decline Sharing Back (Optional but Recommended): When Google Photos prompts if you want to share photos back with your source account, select “Not now” to avoid creating a two-way sharing relationship if you only intend a one-time transfer.

Step 3. Save Shared Photos to Your Destination Account.

Access Shared Photos: In your destination account, navigate to Google Photos.
Go to “Sharing”: Click “Sharing” in the left-hand menu panel.
Select Source Account: Click on the name of your source account displayed on the right. This will display all photos shared from your source account.
Open Settings Menu: In the top-right corner, click the three-dot menu (More options).
Go to Partner Sharing Settings: Select “Settings” and scroll down to the “Partner sharing” section.
Save to Account: Click “Save to your account.”
Choose “Save all photos”: Select “Save all photos.” This initiates the process of saving all photos, including those within albums, to your destination Google Photos account.

If you have many photos organized into albums, proceed to Step 4 to recreate the album structure manually in your destination account.

Step 4. Recreate Albums in the Destination Account (Manual Album Transfer).

Skip this step if you don’t need to preserve your album organization.

Google Photos currently doesn’t offer an automatic way to retain album structures when saving shared content. Therefore, you need to manually recreate albums in your destination account to mirror your source account’s organization. This process will not duplicate photos already copied in Step 3; it only recreates the album structure.

Repeat these steps for each album in your source account’s Google Photos:

Open Source and Destination Accounts: Sign in to both your source and destination accounts using different browser tabs or browser windows for easy switching.
Open Album in Source Account: Open the specific album you want to transfer in your source account.
Share Album (Create Link): In the top-right corner of the album view, click the “Share” icon and select “Create link.”

Alt text: Sharing a Google Photos album by creating a shareable link, highlighting the “Create link” option in the share menu.
Paste Link in Destination Account Browser: Copy the generated link and paste it into the browser tab where you are logged into your destination account.
Open Album and Select All Photos: Open the album through the link in your destination account. Select all photos within the album. A quick way to select multiple items is to click the first photo, hold Shift, and click the last photo.
Add to Album (Recreate Album): Click the “+” icon (Add to) in the top right corner.
Create New Album: Select “Album” and then “New album.” Name the new album in your destination account to match the album name in your source account, effectively recreating the album structure.

After completing these steps for each album in your source account, your previously copied photos will be organized into albums in your destination account, mirroring your original structure. You can access these albums in the “Library” > “Albums” section of Google Photos, as well as in the standard “Photos” view.

If you delete photos from Google Photos in your source account after copying them using Partner Sharing, or if your source account is deactivated, the copies in your destination account will remain safe. However, they will then begin to count against your Google storage quota in the destination account. Be aware that there might be a delay before the storage usage reflects in your destination account.

Exceeding your Google storage quota can prevent you from sending or receiving emails in Gmail and adding new files to Google Drive or Google Photos. To resolve this, you’ll need to either delete existing content or purchase additional storage.

Option 2. Copy Google Photos by Downloading and Re-uploading

It’s crucial to understand that this method will not preserve photo metadata such as dates, camera details, descriptions, or album organization. Photos will be uploaded with the current date as the upload date, and you’ll lose the original album structure.

Before proceeding with this method, ensure you have sufficient free storage space on your computer’s hard drive to accommodate the download of your Google Photos content.

Step-by-Step Guide: Manual Google Photos Transfer via Download and Re-upload

Step 1. Download Your Google Photos Content from Source Account.

You can download photos individually or use Google Takeout for bulk download. Manual selection and download might be suitable if you have a small number of photos. For large libraries, Google Takeout (Google Takeout) is the more practical option for extracting your images.

Step 2. Upload Photos to Your Destination Google Photos Account.

Create Album (Optional): In your destination account, open Google Photos in a browser. You can create a new album by clicking “Create album” in the top-right corner. Creating albums before uploading can help organize your photos as you transfer them.
Upload Photos:
- To upload to an album: If you created an album, you’ll see an option to “Add photos” immediately.
  
  Alt text: The “Add photos” button within a Google Photos album, used to upload photos directly into the album.
- To upload without an album (general upload): Click the “Upload” button in the top-right corner of Google Photos.
  
  Alt text: The “Upload” button in the Google Photos interface, used to initiate the photo upload process to the main photo library.
Select and Upload: Select one or more photos (use Ctrl+select or Cmd+select for multiple selection) from your downloaded files and click “Open.”
Wait for Upload: Allow the photos to upload completely. Upload speed will depend on your internet connection and the size of the files.
Repeat for Albums (Optional): If you downloaded photos in album folders using Google Takeout, repeat the album creation and upload process for each folder to roughly maintain some organization (though album metadata will still be lost).

Transfer Google Drive Files to Another Account

Transferring Google Drive files to a different account is fortunately simpler than Google Photos migration. While manual copying of Google Drive items is possible, using an automated migration app like VaultMe can save considerable time and effort.

VaultMe is a secure and user-friendly application designed for transferring data between online accounts, including Google accounts. It has assisted millions of users in efficiently migrating their digital content.

Here’s why VaultMe is recommended for Google Drive migrations:

Comprehensive Migration: In addition to Google Drive, it can transfer Gmail emails, contacts, and calendars to your new account, providing a complete account migration solution.
Preserves Data Integrity: It transfers both owned and shared documents, retaining folder structure, file formats, and formatting within documents, ensuring data integrity.
Cloud-Based Efficiency: VaultMe operates “in the cloud,” allowing you to initiate the migration and then close your device; the transfer continues in the background.
User-Friendly and Fast: It is designed for quick setup, ease of use, and fast transfer speeds, saving you time and hassle.
Verification and Reporting: VaultMe generates a detailed migration report upon completion, allowing you to easily verify the transfer results and ensure all data has been moved successfully.

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For any questions regarding VaultMe, please contact us at [email protected]. We are happy to assist you!

Transfer Google Photos to iCloud

If you are transitioning to the Apple ecosystem and have sufficient iCloud storage, you can migrate your Google Photos content to iCloud using Google Takeout. However, remember that metadata transfer may be incomplete, and the accuracy of the transfer is not fully guaranteed.

Steps to transfer Google Photos to iCloud using Google Takeout:

Enable iCloud Photos and iCloud Drive: Ensure these services are active in your iCloud settings.
Verify iCloud Storage: Confirm you have enough free iCloud storage to accommodate your Google Photos library.
Access Google Takeout: Go to Google Takeout.
Select Google Photos for Export: Choose Google Photos as the data to include in your export.
Choose iCloud Photos as Destination: Select “Apple – iCloud Photos” as the destination for your exported photos and sign in with your Apple ID.
Grant Permissions: Authorize Google to add photos and videos to your iCloud account by granting the necessary permissions.
Wait for Transfer: Allow the transfer process to complete. The duration will depend on the size of your photo library and internet speeds.

Before initiating the transfer, it’s recommended to review Apple’s official instructions: Transfer a copy of your photos and videos to iCloud Photos. Be aware of the potential limitations of this method before you begin.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I back up Google Photos to a different account?

To create a backup of your Google Photos in a separate account, you can utilize partner sharing. Set up partner sharing for all your photos (both existing and new) with your backup account. Then, save the shared photos to the backup account as described in Option 1. This ensures your photos are safely duplicated, even if your original account is compromised or deleted.

Can I transfer all my Google Photos to a different account?

Yes, you can transfer all your Google Photos. The recommended method is Partner Sharing (Option 1), which involves these steps:

Set up Partner Sharing from your source account to your destination account.
Accept the invitation in your destination account.
Save the shared photos to your destination account.
Manually copy albums (optional but recommended).
(Optional) Delete photos from your source account after verifying the transfer.

Refer to Option 1 above for detailed instructions.

How do I download all photos from Google Photos?

Google Takeout is the primary method for downloading all or selected albums from Google Photos. However, be aware of the limitations discussed earlier in this article, particularly regarding metadata loss and potential complexities with large libraries. Review these limitations carefully before using Google Takeout.

Conclusion

Transferring Google Photos from one Google account to another can appear complex due to the separation from Google Drive and API limitations. However, it is entirely achievable using the methods outlined in this guide.

Whether you choose the Partner Sharing method for metadata preservation and album recreation, or the download-and-upload approach for a simpler but less comprehensive transfer, understanding the steps and considerations for each is key. By following the detailed instructions provided, you can successfully migrate your Google Photos to a new account. Remember to assess your storage needs and choose the method that best aligns with your requirements and timeline.

If you also need to migrate your Gmail, Drive files, Contacts, and Calendars, consider using VaultMe, a robust automated tool designed for comprehensive online account migration.

If you’re exploring Google Takeout for email and file extraction, understand the potential challenges by reading: Google Takeout Alternative.

For guidance on transferring your Google Drive content to another account, see: How to Transfer Google Drive to Another Account.