[moviuro]

Before this happens to you too: rclone[0] can be used to sync (or pull) data from Google's services to a local machine. It's pretty slow, but it "just works"^TM

[0] https://rclone.org, https://rclone.org/drive/, https://rclone.org/googlephotos/

[mschulkind]

Google takeout is a much much better option.

[bravetraveler]

Can't say I've used rclone for this, but I wouldn't discard it so easily

I have a rather large library from Takeout and it's been a burden.

It seems I'm going to need to write something to interpret their metadata to make it remotely useful again; they provide a flat archive with images and JSON files.

If I have to do this, I'd rather pick my tools on familiarity - compared to Takeout, I have slightly more with rclone

Truth be told I'm a data hoarder, I'll probably do both and reconcile

[karteum]

From my experience, the mbox file from Google Takeout breaks some non-ASCII non-UTF8 characters from old emails you may have received (they are all replaced by 0xEFBFBD. No way to solve this). This issue does not happen when backuping emails with IMAP or GYB/GMvault (by the way I have written this little tool to use/explore GMVault backups https://github.com/karteum/gmvaultdb :).

It seems I'm not the only one experiencing those encoding issues with Google Takeout https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/71153/takeout-br...

[moviuro]

Which cannot be automated, AFAICT. I'm syncing pictures of 4 GooglePhoto accounts twice a week each on a machine at home. Fire and forget.

But yeah, Google takeout can be done once a month if you have time to spare for that task.

[roywiggins]

rclone's documentation warns you that you can't actually get the original resolution photos back out via the Photos API. Better than nothing, obviously, but...

[dspillett]

Many don't realise that they aren't even storing the full quality originals on Google at all.

To be sure I backup my phone's photos using rsync (via termux) to my own backup locations.

[10729287]

... just a confirmation that signing for anything on google just makes you their hostage. I'm happy I quit them 5 years ago after I couldn't have access to my mail anymore after I stepped down my paid drive access to free one and I didn't have space anymore to receive emails.

[Dylan16807]

Because that hit you by surprise, or because you intended to keep all those photos while on the free tier?

It seems to me like deleting the files over your storage limit is the easy path for both you and google and I don't see how this is an example of holding you hostage. At most bad communication and a lack of warning.

[10729287]

Don't remember exactly but I was expecting not the two services being linked. IIRC I already downloaded back a lot of pictures and my free plan was something like 99% full. The fact that Google blocked my email reception without any notice was hard to swallow.

[bornfreddy]

Yes and no. It's more like google held them hostage and then just shot them without a request for ransom. It is the easy path though, I agree.

[Scaevolus]

There's also this, which uses Chrome DevTools to automatically scrape it all: https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp

[rsync]

Correct.

I want very much for the rclone/Gmail integration to work well but it’s very complicated and fussy.

You are better off doing a takeout and downloading in your browser.

[sp0rk]

The limitations page for the Google Photos backend [1] is something to behold. I can't imagine very many people would view this as a viable alternative to Takeout with the current limitations. This bolded one seems like it would be a dealbreaker for most people with photos:

> The current google API does not allow photos to be downloaded at original resolution. This is very important if you are, for example, relying on "Google Photos" as a backup of your photos. You will not be able to use rclone to redownload original images. You could use 'google takeout' to recover the original photos as a last resort

[1] https://rclone.org/googlephotos/#limitations