How to Download Google Photos to Hard Drive

Your Google Photos must have so many photos that you want to dump somewhere but also want to keep close as memories. A hard drive is an easy answer for backup of these kinds of photos. Google Photos has limited storage i.e. 15GB which makes downloading photos to the hard drive even more reasonable.

Of course, buying the storage plan of Google photos is also a good choice but when you download photos to a hard drive, you add an extra backup. Once you move photos and videos to your hard drive you will also have offline and easy access to them without any buffer.

Using Google Photos From Browser

You can use the Google Photos website from your browser to download one or multiple photos to your device.

Go to Google Photos from your browser.
Sign in to your Google account.
Select the photos you want to download (Hold down Shift and Drag your mouse to select many pictures at once.)
Click on the three dots at the top-right corner
Click on Download

When you download the photos one by one, they are downloaded to the PC in their original format. But when you download two or more photos, they get downloaded in .zip format. You will need to extract the files to access the photos.

Open File Explorer on your PC
Go to the Downloads folder
Locate the Zip archive file with your photos in it.
Right-click on the file and click on Extract All

Using Google Takeout

Google Takeout is another good way to download photos from Google Photos. But, when you use Google Takeout, you can not select pictures one by one. You will have to make a separate album with photos of your choices before proceeding to use Google Takeout. You can also download photos from folders like Archive, Trash, and according to the year.

Open Google Takeout.
Click on Deselect All.
Scroll down to Google Photos.
Select Google Photos.
Click on All photo albums included.
Choose albums that you want to download.
Click on OK
Scroll to the bottom.
Click on Next step
Under Destination, choose Send download link via email
Select the Frequency as required.
Click on Create Export

Now, check your email to see if the export is complete. You will need to open Gmail and download the photos from the email. Once the download is complete, extract the photos from the .zip folder and move to the hard drive.

Using Google Drive App For PC

With the Google Drive app, you will be able to download any files, folders, photos, and videos to your PC. The exporting time may vary according to your internet speed and the number of photos you are exporting.