How to easily move your photos from Facebook to Google Photos

Sharing isn’t easy. It’s difficult to move photos from one social network to another or storage. Now, Facebook and Google have made it simple to copy your Facebook photos to Google Photos. This is the first fruit of an open-source project, the Data Transfer Project, to make it much easier to trade photos and other data among the Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter platforms. 

The objective is to make it easier for you, the user, to control your data. Once completed, if you get sick and tired of Facebook, you can grab all your photos, messages, and files and transfer them to say Microsoft OneDrive.

When I say “your” data, I mean just that. When you transfer photos or videos, you can only copy over those that you’ve put on Facebook. With this new tool, you can’t transfer down images of yourself that others have posted. 

While this functionality is new to US and Candian users, it’s been working for some Irish users since late 2019

For now, you can only transfer photos from Facebook to Google Photos. By default, any Google account comes with 15GB of storage. If you need more, you can get 100GB for $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year, 200GB for $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year, or 2TB for $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year. If you’re a professional photographer or you can’t stop taking selfies, you can rent up to 30TB of storage.

Google Photos can store images with up to 16-megapixel resolution. It also comes with a built-in photo organizer and editor tools. 

To move your Facebook images to Google Photos, you start by logging into Facebook. Once there, go to your Facebook settings. This is located on the upside-down triangle icon on the right of your desktop screen. 

Once there, on the left, you’ll see near the top of the left-hand menu Your Facebook Information.  Click on this, and you’ll see a new menu in the middle of the page. 

From here, choose Transfer a Copy of your Photos or Videos. Next, you’ll be prompted to enter your Facebook password. Once that’s done, you’re given a “choice” of where you can transfer your photos or videos (Choose Destination). Of course, for now, your only choice is Google Photos.

You must then log in to Google and give Facebook permission to add to your Google Photo library. Finally, you click Confirm Transfer, and the transfer is on its way. 

The transfer itself isn’t quick. I copied over approximately 500Ms of photos and it took about an hour. Still, it’s fast enough for all practical purposes. I then checked and found that all my images had made it over. 

It’s a handy little tool, and if you, like me, aren’t sure you’re always going to be on Facebook, it’s a nice way to make sure your images go with you.

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