Follow these super easy steps to shuttle a copy of your Apple photos in iCloud over to Google Photos.
You can never have too many backups of important data, including photos, videos, secret recipes, spy documents, and whatever else you deem valuable. Apple may not be able to help much with the latter two, but when it comes to all those photos and videos sitting in iCloud, the company has quietly released a new tool that makes it easy (though not necessarily quick) to shuttle copies over to Google Photos. The silent roll-out is not really surprising—Apple is probably loathe to draw attention to a service that sits outside of its own ecosystem. And that being the case, it is all the more appreciated that Apple would release a tool like this. So, kudos to Cook and the rest of the Cupertino gang. “You can request to transfer a copy of photos and videos you store in iCloud Photos to Google Photos. Transferring photos and videos from iCloud Photos doesn’t remove or alter the content you store with Apple, but sends a copy of your content to the other service,” Apple explains. Apple also notes that this transfer (or more accurately, backup) takes between three and seven days. It’s not clear if the copying of photos and videos over to Google Photos could take less time for smaller libraries, but either way, the time frame is not based on size alone. Apple says it also uses that time to “verify that the request was made by you.” Also note that not everything might get ported over.
