Changing from the mobile ecosystem to the other is never an easy task but there are clearly attempts to make the transition as smooth as possible from either the mobile brands themself or 3rd party tools and apps. Apple has therefore decided to take a surprising step that will ease the transfer of your photos from its iOS to Android, a competitive mobile operating system made by Google. The change will affect one of the most important areas – photography.
If you are using your iCloud account for backups, as most of us are, you can now freely move all your photos from the iCloud right to Google Photos. You can do so via Apple’s official tool on privacy.apple.com. After you log in, you will be able to manage your data by either downloading a copy of all your data shared with Apple, correcting your personal data and finally transfer a copy of your data to other platforms. Although Google Photos is currently the only option available here, more cloud backup services might follow.
The transfer itself is smooth, although you have to make sure, you have enough storage available in your Google Photos. Apple’s web app will show you an approximate number of your photos, videos and their total size before transferring. It is also necessary that you activate 2 step verification prior to the transfer.
The whole photo transfer from iCloud to Google Photos takes between 3-7 days to allow Apple enough time to confirm that it is really you who asked for the transfer of the photos.
After the succesfull transfer, your photos will keep its structure and stay in their Albums, however videos might be placed in Google Photos loosely and you will need to add them to your Albums afterwards. It has also been reported that there were some issues with transfering RAW photos some regular photos were loosing its metadata.
The service is currently available in European Union, Australia, New Zeland, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, Canada, United Kingdom and in the United States and it is possible it will be rolled out to other countries in near future as well.
