Published: Jun 9, 2026
You have decided you are done with Google Photos. Maybe it was reading what they actually do with your images. Maybe it was the AI features appearing in your library without a clear opt-out. Maybe you just want your memories somewhere that is not tied to a company with a pattern of changing the rules after you have committed years of photos to their platform.
The problem is the exit. “Download all your Google Photos” sounds simple. It is not. Google’s export tool, called Takeout, does give you your files. But what comes out of that process is not as clean or organized as you would expect. There are zip files, JSON metadata files, confusing folder names, and an experience designed to comply with data portability laws rather than to actually help you move cleanly.
This guide covers the whole thing. What Takeout does, what the files look like when they arrive, the metadata problem you need to know about, and how to get your photos into a private home where they will stay.
What Google Takeout Actually Gives You
Google Takeout is the official export tool for your Google account data, including Google Photos. You access it at takeout.google.com.
When you request a Google Photos export, you get:
- Your image and video files (JPG, HEIC, PNG, MP4, MOV) in their original resolution
- A folder structure organized by year (and sometimes by album)
- A JSON sidecar file for every image, containing metadata: the date taken, GPS coordinates, descriptions, and favorites
The important word there is “sidecar.” The metadata lives in a separate file next to your photo, not embedded inside the image itself. That distinction matters a lot when you re-upload.
Step-by-Step: Requesting Your Download
- Go to takeout.google.com and sign in with your Google account.
- Click “Deselect all” at the top of the services list to clear the defaults.
- Scroll down to Google Photos and check that box only. If you want specific albums rather than everything, you can choose them here.
- Scroll to the bottom and click “Next step.”
- Under “Delivery method,” choose “Send download link via email.”
- Set the file type to .zip and choose a maximum archive size. The default is 2GB. For large libraries, this means dozens of separate files to download.
- Click “Create export.”
Processing time depends on how many photos you have. A library of a few thousand photos might be ready in a few hours. Tens of thousands of photos can take 24 hours or more. Google emails you when it is ready.
When the email arrives, download each zip file individually. For a 50GB library, plan for most of a day to download and extract everything, depending on your internet speed.
Keep the original zip files after you extract them. These are your master backup. Do not delete them until you have confirmed your photos are safely in their new home.
The Metadata Problem Nobody Explains
This is where most “how to download Google Photos” guides stop. They do not tell you what happens next, and it matters.
Inside each year folder, you will see your image files alongside .json files with matching names. Those JSON files contain the real date the photo was taken, the GPS location, and other metadata. The problem is that this data is not embedded in the image file itself.
In some cases, the EXIF date embedded in the actual image file shows when the photo was uploaded to Google Photos, not when you took it. A photo from your 2017 camping trip might show 2021 as its creation date because that is when you uploaded it. When you re-upload those files to another service, your chronological photo history gets scrambled.
You have a few practical options:
Re-embed the metadata before moving. Tools like ExifTool (free, command-line, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux) can read the JSON sidecar files and write the correct dates back into the image files. This takes some setup but gives you a clean library with accurate dates before you import anywhere. Google Takeout Manager is a third-party app that simplifies this process with a graphical interface.
Accept the folder structure as your date reference. Since Google organizes exports by year and sometimes by month, the folder names tell you when photos were taken even if the embedded EXIF data is off. If you organize your new library by albums rather than by date, the scrambled dates may not matter much in practice.
Use the album folders, not the year folders. If you had albums organized by event or trip, those appear as separate named folders in your export. Photos inside those folders are grouped the way you grouped them in Google Photos. Re-importing from album folders rather than year folders preserves your original organization.
For most people, the practical path is: download your Takeout export and keep it as a master backup, then selectively re-upload the photos that matter most to your new home using the album folders.
Getting Your Photos Into a Private Home
Once your files are downloaded, you need somewhere to put them that does not recreate the same problems you just left.
iCloud works well if your entire family uses Apple devices, but it becomes expensive for large libraries and does not work cleanly for mixed iPhone and Android households. Amazon Photos raised concerns when Echo Show devices started displaying photos alongside ads. Flickr reduced free storage to 1,000 photos and increased prices significantly. Google Drive is not a photo experience at all. The best photo storage for family memories in 2026 goes through the main options with current pricing and honest feature comparisons.
Yogile is a private photo storage platform. Your photos are not scanned for advertising, not used for AI training, and not shared with third parties. You upload in original quality, photos stay there, and you can share albums with anyone without them needing to create an account. The paid plan is $44.99 per year with unlimited storage.
To import your Google Photos:
- Create a Yogile account at yogile.com.
- Create an album for each event, year, or group of photos you want to import. Albums are how you organize in Yogile, so creating a few to start with makes the upload process more structured.
- Upload photos from your extracted folders. You can use the Yogile web uploader or the iOS and Android apps.
- Yogile stores your photos in original quality with no compression.
If your library is large, do not try to import everything at once. Start with the photos that matter most and work backward. A few albums from important years is better than a half-finished bulk import you abandon.
What really happens to your photos on Google Photos explains the specific access Google has to photos in their service, which is useful context for understanding what you are moving away from and what “private” actually means in practice.
After the Migration: The Practical Stuff
Your photos do not disappear from Google immediately. They stay in your Google account until you delete them. Wait until you have confirmed your Yogile import is complete and you are happy with the organization before deleting anything from Google.
Once you are ready to delete from Google Photos, you can do it through the Google Photos app or the web interface. Google also gives you a 60-day window after deletion where data can be recovered, so even the delete step is not instant.
The day-to-day change after migration is simpler than it sounds. If you had Google Photos set as your automatic backup on your phone, go into the Google Photos app settings and turn off “Back up and sync.” Then set up Yogile’s iOS or Android app to handle automatic backup going forward.
How to back up your phone photos without iCloud or Google walks through the exact steps for turning off Google backup and setting up private automatic backup on both iOS and Android.
If you were sharing photos with family through Google Photos, how to share photos with family without putting them on Facebook covers how that works in Yogile. Family members can view albums through a shared link without creating an account, which matters when you have relatives who are not going to sign up for another service.
The Thing Most People Do Not Realize Until Later
The photos you took over the last ten years are not replaceable. Running them through a single platform’s terms of service creates a dependency that most people do not think about until something changes.
The real cost of free photo storage goes through what has actually changed with Google, Amazon, and Apple’s photo storage offerings in the last few years: price increases, policy updates, and features that were free and then were not.
The migration is not a one-afternoon project for large libraries. But downloading your export is. That is the step that matters most, because once your photos are downloaded and safe, everything else happens on your schedule.
The honest Google Photos alternative for 2026 covers where Yogile sits relative to the other options people commonly consider, including the self-hosted alternatives that privacy forums recommend but that most families do not actually have the setup to run.
Your Google Photos export is yours to request any time, at no cost, from takeout.google.com. Start there. Get your photos downloaded and safe. Then decide where they live long-term from a position of choice rather than dependency.
Move your photos to Yogile. Private storage, unlimited photos, $44.99 per year. Create your account and start your first album.