After half a year of being available in certain parts of the world, Facebook’s tool for migrating photos from its platform to Google Photos is finally live for everyone around the world. Yes, including us here in Kenya. The feature has, since early March, been available in a handful of African countries.
For many an Android user – and those on other platforms as well – Google is almost the go-to place for storing our photos. With unlimited* storage for photos and videos, it is almost a no-brainer.
However, Google Photos only came to life long after those of us who have been around for much longer, had already had all the fun of the initial days on Facebook. Even then, many more people have continued using Facebook to share memories with friends and family. This means that memories and special moments are strewn all over.
If it’s been your dream to get all of your memories under one roof then, Facebook is offering you an easy way to achieve your consolidation goal using its photo transfer tool.
Here is how:
1. Log in to your Facebook account
2. Navigate to the top right corner, access the dropdown and select Settings & Privacy
3. Select Settings
4. Select Your Facebook information**
5. Select Transfer a copy of your photos or videos
6. Under Choose destination, select Google Photos
7. Choose what you wish to port over to Google Photos: photos or videos (you can only choose one, not both), then select Next
8. Authenticate the process on Google’s end – you will be prompted to log in to your Google account then grant Facebook the necessary permissions
9. Confirm Transfer
10. Voila! Sit and wait for the process to finish – at this point you can exit Facebook as the process will go on behind the scenes.
**Up to this point, if you are doing this process from the Facebook Android application then it will henceforth shift to the mobile browser. You’ll still see pretty much the same output as outlined in the following steps. You just need to authenticate first and it’s all good from there.
*Google Photos limits photos to 16 megapixels and videos to 1080i in order for the user to enjoy unlimited storage. Anything above that is compressed to that level.
