How To Transfer Your Facebook Photos To Google Photos

From the launch of Facebook on 4th February 2004 up until now, the social media giant has accumulated over 5 billion users, including all groups of people from the young to the old, with 1.6 billion of them using the app daily. If you are one of these people who use Facebook rather often, you definitely must have posted your fair share of photos on the app. However, keeping track of your uploads after such a long time certainly isn’t feasible. 

We all have those moments where we try to search for a posted pic but fail miserably because it got lost among the thousands of other photos on the site. Earlier it was possible to manually save our uploaded pics from Facebook on our devices and then later re-upload it, but a new feature rolled out by the app has made this procedure much more comfortable. Now we can easily transfer our photos from Facebook onto Google Photos, Dropbox, or other storage sites.

This newly developed tool by Facebook is called the “photo and migration tool” and is a product of the data transfer project, which was a joint initiative taken by Facebook, Twitter, and others to increase the portability of data between various services. This feature is, fortunately, easy to use, and the photos can be transferred without much hassle. This is how you can get it done. 

Step 1: Download And Run Google Photos

Most Android devices have Google Photos and an in-built option, but the app can be downloaded from the Google Play Store in case it isn’t present on your phone. To use Google Photos, a Google account is required, which almost everyone has nowadays. You can use it on the internet, or as an app on your phone.

Step 2: Open Facebook Settings

On your desktop browser, open the settings page of Facebook by clicking on the down arrow present on the upper right corner. Amongst the options shown, select Settings and Privacy and then Settings. 

Step 3: Initiate Photo Transfer on Facebook:

At the Settings screen, select “Your Facebook Information”. You will then see an option that says “Transfer a Copy of Your Photos or Videos.” A prompt asking you to enter your password will then appear, which you must type and then move on to the next page. 

On the screen to “Transfer a Copy of Your Photos or Videos”, click on the drop-down button present under the “Choose Destination” option and select Google Photos, which is where your photos will get transferred.

Now, choose whether you want to transfer your photos or your videos, as only one can be selected at a time. Click on the “Next” button, and choose which google account you wish to transfer the photos to, in case you have more than one. If this is the first time you’re doing a transfer, Facebook will ask for access to your Google Photos library. Select “Allow”.

After this, you will be redirected back to Facebook and asked for a confirmation on whether you wish to proceed with the transfer. To continue, click on the “Confirm Transfer” option. As soon as you do this, the photo transfer will immediately begin. Around the same time, you will also receive an email informing you about the confirmation of the transfer

If you need to stop the transfer for any reason whatsoever, tap on the “Stop” button, after which the process will stop. Otherwise, just let it continue and hold on for a while as it continues. The transfer rate will depend on the number of photos being moved from one device to another. A good internet connection also makes a world of difference.

Another thing to note is the amount of space available on Google Photos. Up to 15 GB of space is offered on the platform for free, after which you can pay $1.99 a month for 100 GB or $9.99 a month for one terabyte. In case you’re not interested in a subscription, and you have a lot of photos already taking up space, clearing out a few of them may be advisable.

Google Photos supports pictures with a maximum resolution of  16-megapixels, but this generally shouldn’t be an issue, as Facebook automatically downgrades the quality of any photo uploaded on its site. 

After the transfer is finished, a notice will appear on Facebook, and the status of the process will change to “Completed”. You can now open your Google Photos and look through all the photos or videos that were transferred.  If everything went fine, then all your files should have made it through. 

After this is done, you can repeat the process if you wish to move your other sets of photos or videos, depending on what you transferred first. 

Each photo that you take has a few of your memories captured in it, and for them to be lost to time would be the worst thing ever. Thankfully, with this new feature, you can easily transfer your photos from Facebook to Google Photos, which is much more easily navigatable and will allow you to view your happy moments whenever you wish.                             

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