Frequently asked questions

Import from Google Photos

Follow the following steps to recover your data from Google Photos and preserve it with ente.

Steps

  1. Open takeout.google.com.

  2. Click on "Deselect All" (since by default all Google services are selected).

    Google Takeout - Create a new export
  3. Scroll down to find Google Photos in the list and select it by clicking the check box next to it.

    Google Takeout - Select Google Photos
  4. Click on the button that says "All photo albums included".

  5. Select the albums you want to export.

    Google Takeout - Select albums
  6. Scroll down and click on "Next Step".

    Google Takeout - Next
  7. Select "Frequency" and "File size" depending on the amount of storage on your system and click on "Create export".

    Google Takeout - Frequency and file size
  8. Wait for Google to send you your data.

  9. Unzip the archives you've downloaded from Google, and drag and drop the folders to our desktop app.

  10. Wait for the uploads to complete as Ente parses the metadata generated by Google, encrypts them along with your files and backs all of them up to our servers.

Note: In case your uploads get interrupted, just drag and drop the folders into the same albums again, and we will ignore already backed up files and upload just the rest.

If you run into any issues during this migration, please reach out to support@ente.io and we will be happy to help you!

Google takeout zip

Ente also supports importing Google takeout zips directly.

When importing a Google takeout, Ente will parse the metadata in the JSON files and preserve them along with corresponding files. However, one case this will not work is when Google has split the export into multiple parts, and did not put the JSON file associated with an image in the same exported zip.