Le Chic Geek
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Earier today, I wrote about how Google Photos is a great tool for travelers. Â Most of my travel photos from before I had Google Photos (well, the ones I didn’t lose) are on Facebook.
Since I wanted all my photos in one place, I decided to move my Facebook photos into Google Photos.  Luckily, it was easy.
And I’m glad, because putting them into Google Photos results in things like this:
I used to pull photos out of Facebook by downloading them individually. Â But it would be crazy to download thousands of photos and then upload all of them to Google Photos.
Luckily, there’s an easier way.
Getting Your Photos Out of Facebook
There’s an easy but not intuitive way to get your photos out of Facebook.
First, go to the settings area of Facebook.
In the settings tab, there’s an option to download all your Facebook data.
When you click on the link, it spends some time creating a .zip file. Â After the zip file finishes building, you’ll get an email.
The file itself will take a while to download. Â Mine was 70 megabytes (as a zipped file).
Getting the Pictures into Google Photos
The first step to getting these photos into Google Photos is unzipping the zip file. Â It’ll create a file with multiple folders. Â One will be called Photos.
You can literally drag and drop this folder into Google Photos and it will sync.
Make sure you unzip the file before doing this. Â It will look like you can drop the folder in Google Photos when it’s zipped, but nothing will actually sync.
What to Do Next
Wait. Â The photos will take a long time to get indexed by Google. Â So even though you’ll be able to see them in your albums, you won’t be able to search them.
I also recommend deleting all the Facebook files.  It has every interaction you’ve ever had on Facebook in it.  You could always download another set off Facebook, so it’s not worth leaving a record in a public place.
That is a great idea, but depending on the speed of someone’s internet connection, and the numbers of photos he/she has on FB, that could literally be an overnight download.
I’ve been an active Facebook user since the beginning. I was surprised my zip file was only 70 megs!
Bad quality?
My computer says “low disc space” and won’t allow me to finish the facebook download. How in the world do I “save as” to my external hard drive, when the options don’t really allow this. I start to browse, and it just keep saying “open” and doesn’t ever truly give the option to save? Any ideas?
How about metadata? Isn’t the date taken/location removed from the picture (making organising it in google photos harder?)
Yes it is. Crap article.