Google Takeout gives you your photos back – but it separates every photo’s real capture date and GPS location into a JSON sidecar file sitting alongside the image. Most photo services read only what is inside the image itself. Skip the fix and your 2018 holiday pictures land sorted in 2022 or 2023, depending on when you uploaded them to Google.
Here is what actually goes wrong, and how to handle all of it: the zip-file situation, the download limits that catch people on large libraries, and the metadata step that most guides mention in a footnote and then move on from.
If you have been thinking about this move because of what Google does with your library in the background, does Google Photos scan your photos gives a straight answer to what the policy actually permits in 2026.
The Three Failure Modes People Actually Report
The zip-file situation. Google splits large exports into multiple archives. A library of 100GB generates around 19 zip files at Google’s default settings. That is manageable, but Google limits simultaneous downloads and the download links expire after one week. People with large libraries on slow connections run out of time before they can get everything out.
The fix: change the archive size to 2GB in Takeout’s settings before submitting the request. More files, but each one downloads faster and is easier to retry if something fails.
Download throttling. On very large exports, Google sometimes interrupts individual downloads mid-session. A partial zip looks fine until you try to extract it. Before you delete anything, check that each file’s size matches what Takeout listed.
The metadata separation. Every photo in a Takeout export comes with a companion file:
IMG_20180714_103245.jpg
IMG_20180714_103245.jpg.json
The .json holds the original capture date and GPS coordinates. The .jpg itself may carry the wrong EXIF date because Google’s upload process sometimes replaced the original timestamp with the date the photo was uploaded. Import those files without fixing this and your photos sort by when you uploaded them to Google, not when you took them.
Step by Step: Requesting Your Export
- Go to takeout.google.com and sign in.
- Click Deselect all at the top to clear all the default services.
- Scroll to Google Photos and check only that box.
- Click Next step.
- Under “Delivery method,” choose Send download link via email.
- Set file type to .zip. Set the maximum archive size to 2GB.
- Click Create export.
A library under 5,000 photos is typically ready in a few hours. Very large libraries of 50,000+ photos can take 24 to 36 hours. When the email arrives, start downloading immediately. Do not wait for all the links to come in at once – download each one as it appears.
Extract everything into a single working folder. Do not delete the zip files until you have confirmed the extraction is complete.
How to Fix the Metadata: Three Options
Option 1: ExifTool (recommended for any size library)
ExifTool reads the JSON sidecar files and writes the correct dates back into the image files. It is free and runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux.
Install on Mac via Homebrew: brew install exiftool
On Windows, download the executable from the ExifTool website and add it to your PATH.
Run this from inside your extracted Takeout folder:
exiftool -r -d %s -tagsfromfile "%d/%F.json" "-DateTimeOriginal<PhotoTakenTimeTimestamp" "-GPSLatitude<GeoDataLatitude" "-GPSLongitude<GeoDataLongitude" -overwrite_original .
This processes every image recursively, reads each JSON sidecar, and writes the original capture date and GPS coordinates back into the file itself. A 20,000-photo library takes a few minutes and runs unattended. After it finishes, every service sorts your photos correctly.
Option 2: Google Takeout Manager (Windows, graphical)
A free Windows application that does what the ExifTool command does above, without the command line. If the terminal is not your thing, try this first.
Option 3: Import from album folders instead
Your Takeout export includes separate named folders for every album you created in Google Photos. Photos inside those folders are already organized the way you organized them. If your library had good album structure, importing from those album folders skips the metadata step entirely.
If you mostly relied on Google’s “memories” view rather than building albums manually, the named folders will be sparse. Use Option 1 or 2 instead.
Where to Put Your Photos After the Download
iCloud Photos works well if every person in your household uses an Apple device. For mixed iPhone and Android families it fails immediately, and one person always ends up left out or texting compressed copies. Storage costs increase steeply past 200GB.
Amazon Photos gives Prime subscribers unlimited photo storage but caps video at 5GB. In 2025, Amazon began displaying users’ own photos on Echo Show devices alongside promoted content, and the terms permit photos to be used for display features.
Flickr has raised its prices several times since 2019 and is oriented toward photographers. The interface is not designed for family photo management.
A hard drive is a valid backup layer but not a sharing solution. Drives fail, get stolen, and cannot give family members access.
Yogile stores photos at original quality without AI scanning or advertising profiles built from your library. Albums are private by default, and you can share them via a link that anyone can open without creating an account. Unlimited photo storage on Premium is $44.99 per year. For a broader comparison of where to move a Google Photos library, the best alternatives to Google Photos covers the main options people actually switch to.
For a look at what privacy actually means once your photos are in a new service – what happens on upload, who the default audience is, and what is never done with the file – what “secure photo storage” actually means for family photos covers those four axes specifically.
Import example from a real Takeout transfer: a 340-photo album covering a family reunion, uploaded after the ExifTool step. Every photo arrived with the correct date. The album was shared by link with 12 relatives, no accounts created on their end.
Yogile’s approach is what they describe as secure photo storage: specific product behaviour rather than adjectives. No AI scanning, no advertising profiles, originals kept, and guests need no account.
Ready to give your library a home? Create a Yogile account and start your first album.
Getting Your Photos Into Yogile: Step by Step
- Create a Yogile account at yogile.com.
- Create one album per event, trip, or year.
- Open an album and drag photos from your Takeout working folder into the uploader. The iOS and Android apps also support multi-photo uploads from the file system.
- Yogile preserves files exactly as uploaded. No recompression, no quality reduction.
For a library of 15,000 photos, start with the last few years and the events that matter most. Older archives can follow when you are ready.
Once you have albums set up, share them with family using a single link. Relatives can view and contribute without creating accounts. How to back up Android photos without giving them to Google covers making Yogile your ongoing backup so new photos stop going to Google automatically.
For the broader story on why people are leaving, what Google really does with your photos goes through the policy language directly: AI training, shared-album terms, and what “private” actually means in Google’s definition. And what happens to your photos if Google bans your account covers the account-lockout risk that most export guides leave out entirely.
After the Move: Turn Off Auto-Backup
Once your library is in Yogile, stop sending new photos to Google.
On iPhone: open Google Photos, tap your profile picture, go to Photos settings > Backup and toggle it off.
On Android: open Google Photos, tap your profile picture, go to Photos settings > Backup and turn it off.
Your existing Google Photos library stays in your account until you actively choose to delete it. Google provides a 60-day recovery window after deletion. Confirm everything transferred correctly before you remove anything from Google’s side.
Your Takeout export is available any time, at no cost, from takeout.google.com. Handle the metadata step and the photos belong to you again, at their original quality, in a service you have chosen.
Import your Google Photos to Yogile. Private storage, original quality, $44.99 per year. Create your account and start your first album.