Changing from Apple to Android or vice versa is often quite finicky. But the latest feature from Apple is making it easier for people to exit its ecosystem by allowing them to easily transfer iCloud photos to Google Photos.
Last week, it was reported that Apple had quietly added an option in iCloud that allows users to transfer photographs to Google’s competing cloud image service.
A user needs to have an iCloud account (which come with 5 GB of free storage) with two-factor authentication turned on and a Google Photos account to use the service.
Google’s Photos service give users at least 15 GB of storage — or sometimes more, if they’re grandfathered in with images uploaded before the free unlimited storage offer ended.
Anyone who’s looking to move to Android, free up some iCloud space or make their images available on another format will find this feature much easier than having to manually download images and upload them to Photos.
How do you transfer photos from iCloud to Google Photos?
It’s a pretty simple process. Users can log into Apple’s privacy portal using their normal iCloud login details.
Nestled between options like deleting your account or downloading all your data is a choice to a choice to transfer data to “another participating service”.
So far, the only participating service is Google Photos. Users can choose to transfer their photos, videos or both to Google Photos.
Not all content can be transferred. Apple warns that some formats like images with Live Photos or raw image files may not transfer. But for the most part, all the usual suspects of image file formats are supported.
Users are then prompted to sign in with their Google account, and receive an email asking them to confirm that it was them that made the request.
Once that’s done, the process is underway. It can take between three and seven days according to Apple, and users will get an email notification once it’s done.