New Google Photos takeout option

[wywh]

Google Photos takeout has a new option to transfer images and movies to Apple iCloud Photos, Flickr, Microsoft OneDrive, and SmugMug.

https://takeout.google.com/takeout/transfer/custom/photos

https://support.apple.com/en-us/120924

I briefly tested Google Photos transfer to Apple iCloud Photos and then the download from iCloud Photos with Safari browser to macOS Sequoia 15.0 as .zip.

Long story short: it was slow and it transferred images and movies from Google Photos quite fine to Apple iCloud Photos. The times might be off because Google Photos seems to use UTC instead local time. None of the metadata edits done in Google Photos or Apple iCloud Photos could be downloaded with Safari browser to the Mac desktop.

But if you want to do it properly, use the old takeout with .json sidecars and workarounds for UTC vs local time, location-less images (incorrect GPS 0.0 in the Atlantic) and incorrect names in .json sidecars (DSC00041(2).JPG vs DSC00041.JPG(2).json).

https://takeout.google.com/

https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=12905.0

...

Some details for the terminally interested:

The new takeout exports original images and movies (*) to Apple iCloud Photos.

Edits done in Google Photos are exported to iCloud Photos database, not in the files themselves. In Google Photos it is possible to edit only the date and caption.

Google Photos Description and "Star", are exported to Apple Photos as Title and "Heart".

Locations can be edited in Google Photos only if there is no location in the original, but the added location is not exported to Apple Photos.

If the files uploaded to Google Photos have original metadata dates, they might be several hours incorrect obviously because Google Takeout labels then as UTC and the GPS location and movie file format (.mp4, .m4v or .mov) muddies the times even more.

None of the metadata edits done in either Google Photos or in iCloud Photos could be downloaded from iCloud Photos no matter what iCloud download option I tried.

iCloud Photos default Download Option seems to be "Unmodified Originals". It has also "Including Edits" options: "Highest Resolution" (HEIC, H.265), and "Most Compatible" (JPEG, MP4/H.264) but the latter two options do not download any of those Google Photos or Apple Photos edits either. "Most Compatible" drops off all metadata. Surprisingly none of those options import metadata edits done in Apple Photos either. I guess macOS Photos.app should better download metadata but I did not test it yet.

(*) .m4v 1920X1080 is re-encoded to .MP4 1280x720. It might be omitted from the downloaded .zip if its name clashes with some other "real" .mp4. Also HEVC .mp4 1920X1080 is re-encoded to .MP4 1280x720 with iCloud "Most Compatible" download option.

- Matti