2 Simple Ways to Transfer iCloud to Google Photos in 2022

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User Case: Can I Move Photos from iCloud to Google Photos
Why Transfer iCloud to Google Photos?
How to Move iCloud to Google Photos on iPhone
How to Move iCloud to Google Photos on PC
Bonus Tip: How to Transfer Google Photos to Another Cloud
Final Words

User Case: Can I Move Photos from iCloud to Google Photos

“I used to have an iPhone with paid iCloud storage, along with free Google Photos. Once I switched over to using an Android, I just continued to use the free Google Photos. I now want to change my Google Photos from free to paid (for the better photo resolution) and understand that I will have to delete everything and reupload it. That is not an issue for me.

However, there are photos that are ‘Apple live photos’ that were uploaded to Google Photos when I had an iPhone. I am still currently paying for iCloud until I can solve this. How can I transfer my photos from iCloud Photos to Google Photos so that the "live photos" stay intact? I have a Samsung note 9, MacBook and a PC which I can use. Any help is greatly appreciated.” – A Question on Reddit.

Why Transfer iCloud to Google Photos?

iCloud is a brilliant cloud storage solution for Apple product users. With free 5GB of storage space, users can store photos, videos, and screenshots to iCloud Photos and access them anywhere, anytime. Although iCloud is wonderful, it has some limitations compared to Google Photos, such as:

Google Photos offers more free storage space. Although Google Photos shares the storage with Google Drive and Gmail, 15GB of free storage space is relatively generous and sufficient for people’s daily use.
Google Photos provides a rich kaleidoscope of search capabilities. If users want to search for certain photos, they can search by topics, faces, and places, which is extremely intelligent.

Therefore, to manage your photos efficiently, you can move photos from iCloud Photos to Google Photos. But some of you might wonder “how to move my iCloud Photos to Google Photos” on iPhone and PC then. No need to panic! We will show you the detailed steps in the following part.

How to Move iCloud to Google Photos on iPhone

If you want to migrate from iCloud Photos to Google Photos on iPhone, downloading and installing Google Photos on your iPhone is the most convenient method since you don’t download photos from iCloud Photos manually. Here’s what you should follow:

Step 1: If you haven’t installed Google Photos on your iPhone, install it first.
Step 2: Head to Settings on your iPhone > Photos > Download and Keep Originals or Optimize iPhone Storage.
Step 3: Launch your Google Photos, click on the account profile in the top right corner, press Photos settings, and select Back up & sync. After that, enable Back up & sync.

Step 3: Select High quality or Original under Upload Size.

In this way, photos can be moved to Google Photos effortlessly. And this operation won’t change any content on your iCloud Photos.

How to Move iCloud to Google Photos on PC

If you want to migrate photos from iCloud Photos to Google Photos on your computer, you can take advantage of the special feature that Apple offers, which allows you to move photos and videos from iCloud Photos to Google Photos directly. Before applying this method, you need to turn on two-factor authentication.

Now, you can follow the step-by-step operations below to get started:

Step 1: Go to Apple’s Data and Privacy and log in with your Apple ID.
Step 2: Press Request to transfer a copy of your data under the Transfer a copy of your data.

Step 3: Choose Google Photos in the next window, select Photos and/or Videos you want to transfer, and hit the Continue tab. If your Google Photos doesn’t have sufficient storage space, then not all items will be transferred from iCloud to Google Photos.

Transfer a Copy from iCloud to Google Photos

Step 4: Confirm Transfer finally.

Tips:

1. This process will take 3-7 days, and when it’s finished, you’ll get a confirmation email. So, you have to be patient.
2. It won’t delete or edit any of your original photos and videos by transferring a copy to Google Photos.
3. Unfortunately, Live Photos, Smart Albums, and some RAW photos cannot be moved to Google Photos successfully by using this method. So, you can upload them to Google Photos manually.
4. If you want to know how to transfer Google Photos to iCloud, click the anchor text to know more.

Bonus Tip: How to Transfer Google Photos to Another Cloud

However, Google Photos canceled its unlimited storage space for compressed photos on June 1, 2021. This means that photos saved on Google Photos, regardless of their resolution and quality, would count towards storage space.

After moving iCloud to Google Photos, the storage space might be insufficient and that’s the reason why many people may turn to other cloud storage services, such as Flickr (Google Photos vs Flickr), OneDrive, MEGA, to save photos and videos.

So, how can you migrate photos and videos from Google Photos to another cloud quickly and seamlessly? Download pictures from Google Photos and re-upload them to another cloud drive? It seems feasible, but extremely time-consuming when there’re a large number of photos. In this situation, it's better to utilize a specialized cloud transfer service – MultCloud.

MultCloud is a FREE and practical cloud to cloud transfer service. Currently, MultCloud supports more than 30+ cloud storage services in the market, such as Google Drive, Google Photos, OneDrive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, FTP, NAS, MEGA, SugarSync, etc. With this service, users can migrate data from one cloud to another directly and quickly.

As a professional technical tool, MultCloud has the following virtues:

Transfer Files Across Clouds Quickly. MultCloud offers leading speed when transferring, which could finish the migration tasks as quickly as possible.
Automatic Transfer. MultCloud allows you to set up scheduled transfer tasks and lets them run at a regulated time, daily, weekly, or monthly.
Run the task in the Background. MultCloud is consuming data traffic instead of Wi-Fi during the migration process. Thus, once the transfer task starts, it can continue even though your computer switches off suddenly.

Now, refer to the operations below to learn how to transfer Google Photos to another cloud via MultCloud, using Flickr as an example.

Step 1: If you don’t have a MultCloud account, create one by your email for free.

Step 2: Go to Add Cloud on the left taskbar, and add Google Photos and Flickr to

Step 3: Press the Cloud Transfer tab on the left navigation bar, then choose Google Photos as the source directory and Flickr as the target directory. Finally, tap the Transfer Now button.

This is how to transfer Google Photos to Flickr with MultCloud. If you want to set up auto-transfer tasks, you can press the Schedule button. Similarly, if you want to transfer Google Photos to other services, re-select the target directory.

Tip: MultCloud will support iCloud shortly. And then you can migrate iCloud to Google Photos effortlessly.

Final Words

After reading this post, you now know how to move photos from iCloud Photos to Google Photos on iPhone and computer. Also, you can migrate photos from Google Photos to other cloud drives with MultCloud in a hassle-free way.