How to set automatic backups for Google Photos
Situations where you lose all your precious memories and photos very rarely, although it can happen. In these cases, it’s extremely beneficial to keep backup copies of all your Google Photo images in a safe place. This guide will walk you through creating automatic backups for Google Photos with Google Takeout, so you don’t have to worry about losing your pictures.
What is Google Data Export?
While it sounds delicious, Google Takeout is nothing more than a way to export important data from most of your Google apps and programs. You can export everything from Google Assistant notes and lists in Drive files to Stadia game activity from Google Takeout.
The service is extremely useful for backing up multiple Google apps at once or setting up an individual backup for an app like Google Photos. You can even set up automatic backups for Google Photos, which will send you a backup file to download from time to time to keep your saved files up to date.
In that case, you can use Google Takeout to export your Google Photos and store them locally on a hard drive or in another cloud program. This way you ensure that your pictures from the past are kept safe somewhere, which gives a bit of peace of mind.
Backup Google Photos images with Takeout
Compared to many other export tools, Google Takeout is by far one of the most user-friendly. The process is simple and generally self-explanatory, but it can take a long time—even days—depending on how many images you have stored in Google Photos.
How to get started:
- In Google Chrome, go to takeout.google.com.
- click deselect all above.
- Scroll down until you see google photos and Click the check mark next to it.
- click All photo albums included if you want to select specific albums to backup. Skip if you want everything downloaded to the cloud for storage.
- Scroll down and press Next Step.
- Click for automatic Google Photos backup Export every 2 months for 1 year. Once and done, strike Export once.
- Choose your file type and size.
- Note: Size refers to the limit of each file before it is split into a new file. If you choose a low limit, you will end up with more individual files. This does not refer to the total amount of data exported.
- click Create export.
That’s it! Your export will begin and soon you will receive an email from Google letting you know that your first Google Photos auto backup is ready to download. As mentioned, this can take a while if you have a lot of photos, so be patient.
Choosing the option to set an automatic backup schedule only takes a year. This year you will end up with 6 different backups sent to you via Google services. Unfortunately, you have to set up a new automatic backup schedule every year, although better than one and done.
Automatic backups for Google Photos are great because you don’t have to worry about initializing one from time to time. Although you’ll receive notification by email or phone, you don’t need to download an export once it’s sent to you, even if you don’t feel you need to, although it’s better to be safe than sorry.
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