Download Google Photos Without Takeout? What Works and the Limits
Ways to download Google Photos without Google Takeout, on the website, the phone app and other tools, and the limits on size, dates and the .json files.
You can download Google Photos without Takeout, but only in small pieces. On photos.google.com you select photos and press Shift + D; in the phone app you download one photo at a time or a small selection. Both give you the photos without the .json files that hold the dates Google knows, and neither is meant for a whole library. Since March 2025, outside tools such as rclone can no longer read the photos you uploaded. For everything, Takeout is still the only complete route.
Way 1: Select and download on the website
- Open photos.google.com on a computer.
- Hover over a photo and click the tick in its corner.
- To select a range, hold Shift and click the last photo. To select a whole day, click the tick next to the date.
- Press Shift + D, or click the three dots at the top right and choose Download.
- One photo downloads as itself. Several come as one zip file, usually named
Photos-001.zip.
The limits. Google does not publish a maximum, but large selections are slow, and many users report that downloads of more than a few hundred photos fail or stop. Building the selection itself is tedious: there is no "select all" for the library. Expect to do it in chunks, a month or a trip at a time.
Way 2: Download a whole album
Open the album, click the three dots and choose Download all. This is the quickest way to get one trip or one event. See download a Google Photos album.
Way 3: The phone app
- Android: open a photo, tap the three dots (More) and tap Download. The option usually appears only for photos that are not already on the phone.
- iPhone: open a photo, tap the share button and choose Save to device, or use the three dots and Download, depending on the app version.
This saves to the phone's gallery, one photo or a small selection at a time. It is fine for a few pictures, not for a library.
Way 4: Copy from the phone over USB
Plug the phone into a computer and copy the DCIM folder. You get the photos still stored on the phone, with the date the camera wrote. You do not get anything that lives only in Google Photos, such as photos from an old phone or ones the "Free up space" button removed.
What about rclone, Google Drive and NAS apps?
Google Drive for desktop does not include Google Photos. They were separated in 2019.
rclone and other tools using the Google Photos API. On 31 March 2025 Google limited its Photos Library API: apps can only see photos and albums they created themselves. A tool you connect today cannot list or download the library you uploaded from your phone. Older guides that say otherwise were written before that change.
The date problem, with or without Takeout
Photos downloaded from the website or the app come without the .json files. Camera photos usually keep their date, because it is written inside the file. Screenshots, chat images, scans, edited photos and photos you re-dated in Google Photos may show the download day instead. With Takeout, the real date and place are at least there, in the .json file next to each photo, ready to be written back.
When to use what
| You want | Use |
|---|---|
| A few photos | the website, Shift + D |
| One album or trip | Download all on the album |
| The whole library | Google Takeout |
| The right dates on everything | Takeout, then write the .json dates into the photos |
Takeout JSON Metadata Fixer for Windows and Mac does the last step in one run: it reads the Takeout zip files, writes the date taken and GPS into each photo, sets the file dates and can sort into Year/Month folders. For photos downloaded without Takeout, it can sort and rename them by the date inside the file, and set a date by hand for a whole folder. The first 500 photos are free.
The full Takeout guide is how to download all your Google Photos.