How to download a photo from google photos

Download a single photo back to your device

1. Open any photo at Google Photos.

   Table of Contents Show

   • Download a single photo back to your device
   • Download multiple photos back to your device
   • User Case: Can I Download Photos from Google Photos with Ease?
   • How to Download Photos from Google Photos to iPhone
   • How do I move photos from Google Photos to gallery?
   • How do I Download a full picture from Google?

2. Tap the 3-dot menu or swipe upwards.

3. Choose Download. If the photo is already on your device, the option will not appear.
   On my Android device the photo is saved to DCIM/Restored and in Google Photos shown in Camera.

Download multiple photos back to your device

When you used "Free up space" all photos are still in the Photos tab of Google Photos, but the folder structure is lost.
When photos were uploaded with setting "Storage saver" (or former "High Quality") the original is also lost.

On iPhone or iPad

• • On iOS you can select multiple photos > use the Share button > Save to device.
    See also https://support.google.com/photos/thread/86166997

  • You can also use iTunes.

On Android (and some also on iOS)

• • On Android there is no option to transfer multiple photos from Google Photos back to your camera roll.

  • You can go to https://photos.google.com/ on the phone, select several photos, tap 3-dots > Download.
    They will be saved as a ZIP file, for example in the "Downloads" folder, where you can "extract" them.

  • You can "Share" selected photos with Google Drive and download from there, but that will probably double the storage used by the photos. Therefore not recommended.
    Similarly you can share with "File manager +" when you install that app, and download to the folder you want.

  • You can use Google Takeout: go to https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout in a browser
    You will also get lots of .json files which you can delete. I recommend to try with a small album to start with.

    • Deselect all products, then select Google photos

    • Tap "All photo albums", then deselect all

    • Select an album, for example "Photos from 2022", and tap OK

    • Scroll down till the end and tap "Next step"

    • When settings are OK, tap "Create export" and wait till ready

    • When ready tap "Download" and Unzip

  • You can download the photos on a computer, connect the Android phone with the computer (USB cable) and copy the photos to the device. See https://support.google.com/android/answer/9064445.

  • See more options on https://www.wikihow.com/Transfer-Images-from-Computer-to-Mobile-Phone

  • You can use the Google One app once to restore the 200 most recent photos.
    See https://support.google.com/photos/thread/84975423

Also note that it is not really safe to delete from your device without making an extra backup. See this article.

Quick Search:

User Case: Can I Download Photos from Google Photos with Ease?

“Recently, I need to download precious images from Google Photos to my local devices since I’ve bought a new computer and iPhone. However, there are too many pictures and I just don’t know how to download those photos from Google Photos with ease. Are there any efficient ways to do so? Looking forward to an effective reply.”

Google Photos is a professional cloud service that is specialized in photo sharing and storing. With a generous 15GB of free storage space, people always like to save important photos and videos here to back up.

However, you may find it frustrated when problems below happen:

• Google Photos lost photos somehow. Without any reason, you just cannot find certain pictures that are save on Google Photos, and the support team of Google Photos cannot find out the reasons.
• Google Photos has implemented a new policy that from June 1, users will have to pay for storage once they exceed the 15GB of free storage space that Google provides to everyone for free.

Due to the "Google Photos storage limit" issue, for those who want to protect data and don’t want to spend money for larger storage space, it is a good choice to download important pictures from Google Photos to hard drive for backup. Nevertheless, when there are plenty of photos, how can download pictures from Google Photos with ease? In this article, 4 useful methods are for your reference.

This part will show you 3 effective methods to download photos from Google Photos to PC by using its official website, Google Takeout and a third-party tool - MultCloud. Now you can refer to those solutions below.

Solution 1: Using Official Webpage of Google Photos

If you have multiple photos to download and the network connection keeps good, you could directly download images from Google Photos by its official web app. The detailed steps are as follows.

Step 1: Log in to Google Photos with your Google account.
Step 2: Select the photos you plan to download from Google Photos to your PC, and click on “3 vertical dots” on the top right side to press the  “Download” button. Then the photos you select will be downloaded to your PC.

Note: Users have to be sure that the network should always be good when using this method, or the process will be affected badly. So, you’d better sit in front of the computer to oversee the download process.

Solution 2: Using Google Takeout

If there are a large number of photos you want to download from Google Photos, the method above cannot meet your requirements. Then, you could use Google Takeout to download those pictures easily and efficiently.

Although it is called Google Takeout, it has nothing to do with takeaway services. Actually, Google Takeout is a technical service for users to download any data from Google products such as YouTube, Gmail and Google Photos. You can follow the operations below to download photos on Google Photos simply.

Step 1: Go to Google Takeout by your Google account and click “Deselect All” – this means you will not download all your Google history.

Step 2: Scroll down your cursor to tick Google Photos. By the way, you can select the folder you intend to download from Google Photos to computer by clicking on “All photo albums included”.

Step 3: Swipe down to bottom and click “Next step” to choose the file type, frequency and destination respectively. Next, click on “Create export”.

Step 4: Now, tap the “Download” button on the next page to start the download process.

Notes: 

1. The export time depends on the size of the image. The larger the image is, the longer the download time will be.

2. You could only choose .zip or .tgz files when exporting files by using Google Takeout. The former one can be open on most computers, while the latter one requires additional software to be open on computers.

3. There may occur situation in which Google Takeout gets failed during the export process for various reasons.

Solution 3: How to Download Photos from Google Photos by Using MultCloud

Above methods are feasible, but have their own limitations. Then, people may want to know what is the easiest way to download photos from Google Photos to computer. Here, MultCloud, a third-party tool, is recommended in this situation.

As a professional cloud file manager, MultCloud can help users to manage multiple cloud services in just one platform. It currently supports more than 30 popular cloud drives in the market like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, MEGA, FTP and so on.

Meanwhile, MultCloud allows user to upload, download, transfer and sync files from one cloud to another or local devices. If you have many photos to download from Google Photos or any other clouds to computer, you can directly use this technical tool to help. Now, let’s have a look at those detailed steps.

Step 1: Visit the official website and sign up for your MultCloud account for free, or you can create a temporary account by clicking “Try without signing up”.

Step 2: You will see many clouds displaying in the interface. Then click “Add Cloud” to add Google Photos.

Step 3: Tap “Google Photos”, and select the photo, and then press on the “Download” button to export the photo to your computer.

Notes:

1. You don’t need to worry about the network connection by using this method since MultCloud offers free users 30GB of data traffic monthly. If you subscribe MultCloud, you will get more. That is to say, MultCloud relies on the data traffic to download, upload or share data, not the network connection.

2. There is no need to sit in front of the computer to supervise the download process because MultCloud can run the task in the background. So, you can perform other operations at the same time.

3. Apart from downloading photos, if you are seeking ways on how to download video from Google Photos, you could also ask MultCloud for help.

How to Download Photos from Google Photos to iPhone

We’ve learned the ways to download photos from Google Photos to computer. However, how to download images from Google Photos to iPhone after buying a new one? Basically, you could easily download pictures from Google Photos to iPhone by its mobile application. Now, you could refer to the detailed operations below:

Step 1: Open Google Photos on your iPhone.
Step 2: Select the photo that you want to download and click on the “3 dots” button on the top right corner.

Step 3: Press the “Save to device” button. If the image is already on your iPhone, there will be no “Save to device” option, which is very intelligent. 

Note: If you want to download multiple photos from Google Photos to iPhone, you could long press the photo until a blue check mark appears on the upper left corner of the image. Then press the “upward arrow on a square” icon.

Conclusion

That’s all for how to download photos from Google Photos easily and effectively. You can choose the best one according to your needs. On top of using Google Takeout and the official website of Google Photos, the technical tool, MultCloud, can also help you download images quickly and effectively.

In addition, MultCloud can help you manage cloud data very well. For example, you can easily transfer from one cloud to another with the feature called Cloud Transfer; if you want to sync files from one cloud to another, like syncing Google Photos with OneDrive, Cloud Sync is waiting for helping you.

How do I move photos from Google Photos to gallery?

How do I Download a full picture from Google?