To synchronize Google Photos with your PC, the easiest and fastest way is to download Google Drive for your computer, install it and log in.
In case you are only interested in synchronizing photos just go to the Drive icon and in preferences you can only synchronize the Google folder.
Anyway in the following article we are going to leave you several step by step manuals on how to synchronize Google Photos on your computer, pc or laptop.
Table of Contents
What is Google Photos?
Google Photos is an amazing application that allows you to store, organize and share photos and videos easily.
You can set up the app so that photos and videos taken with a mobile device are automatically uploaded and synced with your Google account.
It provides a good way to backup and easy access to your photos and videos from any other device.
How to Sync Google Photos on PC & Download
We will see below different ways, just choose the one you like the most.
How to sync Google Photos with PC:
1.Download the Google Photos Backup & Sync app and install it on your PC.
2.Launch the application and sign in with your Google account.
3.Select whether you want to backup only photos or videos, or all files.
4.Choose the folders you want to back up.
5.Select an upload size under Upload size for photos and videos.
6.Click Start.
Download Google Photos to your PC
This method works for both Windows and Mac users.
Open a browser on your PC.
1. Go to the Google Photos home page.
2. Sign in with the correct Google account.
3. Select the photos (or videos) you want to download locally to your PC.
4. Click on the More options icon (represented by three vertical dots) located in the upper right corner.
5. Select Download from the menu.
6. Specify a storage path and click Save.
7. Wait for the process to finish.
If you are downloading more than one photo from Google Photos, they will be compressed into a single ZIP file for convenience.
Uploading to Google Photos from PC
You can also upload your photos stored locally on your PC to the Google Photos service for more convenient access.
1.Open a browser.
2.Go to the Google Photos page.
3.Sign in with your Google account.
4.Access the location where the photos you want to upload are stored on your PC.
5.Select the photos you need.
6.Drag and drop the photos to the Google Photos page.
7.Wait for the upload to complete.
Sync Google Photos to PC using Windows browser
If you only have a few images or photos to sync from Google Photos to PC, you can easily use Windows browser to do it.
You can follow the instructions below:
Step 1: Go to Google Photos and sign in with your Google account.
Step 2: Select the photo or photos you want to sync from Google Photos to PC, and then click the three vertical dots on the top right.
Step 3: Hit the download button, or simply press Shift + D on your keyboard to download.
Notes:
1. if you have created albums, you can go to Album to download all the photos in the album at once.
The steps are very simple:
Step 1: Go to Album.
Step 2: Go to the album you want to download and click on the three dots icon on the top right.
Step 3: Select Download all.
2. If you synchronize your Google Photos images with your PC using the Windows browser, you need to make sure that the network remains healthy during the synchronization process.
If the network connection is interrupted, the whole process can be restarted again.
Synchronizing Google Photos via Google Takeout: all data at once
Google allows you to export and download your data, including email, documents, calendar, photos, Tube videos, etc. from the Google products you use.
And the data will not be deleted from Google’s servers if you download your data from Google.
Go to the Google Takeout page. The Google products that have your data are automatically selected. 2. Check the box for Google Photos to include it in your download file. Select Next step.
2. Customize the format of your file. Choose the delivery method, frequency, file type and size you want. Choose the maximum file size you want to create. If the data you are downloading exceeds this size, multiple files will be created.
3. When your file has been created using one of these options, Google will email you a link to its location. You can download the file to your PC directly.
Why sync photos from Google Photos to PC?
Generally, users prefer to back up their photos and videos to Google Photos to protect their data.
However, sometimes it is necessary to sync Google Photos with PC for the following reasons:
Saving Google Photos storage. Google has ended its unlimited storage space for high-quality photos as of June 2021.
To solve the “Google Photos storage limit” problem, it is feasible to sync photos from Google Photos to PC and then free up Google Photos storage by deleting those photos.
Protect data. Although Google Photos is a wonderful service for people to store photos, videos and audio files.
However, sometimes the problems of losing photos from Google Photos, not syncing Google Photos and not backing up Google Photos occur.
Therefore, to add a layer to protect your precious photos, syncing pictures from Google Photos to PC is a useful way.
As you can see, syncing Google Photos to PC is beneficial.
Although the direct way to sync photos from Google Photos to PC is no longer available now, you can still achieve the goal by following the methods below.
Why Google Photos does not appear by default on PC?
Although your devices can sync Google Photos automatically, photos and videos stored on it cannot appear by default on a computer.
Why is that? The fundamental reason is that the ability to sync photos between Photos and Drive has already been removed.
However, just because you can’t sync Google Photos to PC directly doesn’t mean you can’t view photos and videos locally on a PC or back up Google Drive files to PC.
There are still some useful workarounds you can take.
Tip: Many users may have deleted photos, documents or other types of files while performing tasks on their PCs: using Google Photos, for example.