Apple has taken a small step with the opening of its platform to another service. To date, the ecosystem had restricted operations for anyone external to Apple. It appears change is in the winds. Apple has announced a new service that will facilitate the transfer of iPhone Photos and video collection to Google account.
iOS owners can now make the switch to the Android platform without hassles. The copy of media files to Android is painless and it doesn’t make any alteration to iPhone photos. It is as simple as doing copy-paste from Apple to another service.
The service has not been rolled out to select countries – Australia, Canada, EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, UK and USA. Maybe, Apple will plan to launch in rest of the world after ironing out any issues that crop up in first phase.
How to upload photos from iPhone to Google Photos?
While initiating a request with Apple, there are a few pre-requisites. One needs to have photos and videos stored on iCloud Photos. Two-factor authentication must be enabled in the Apple ID settings. One should have a valid Google account with more than sufficient storage available.
The request to transfer photos from the iPhone gallery to Google photos needs to be raised at privacy.apple.com after signing in with Apple ID. Follow instructions after opting for “Transfer a copy of your data”. Sign in to your Google account when asked to initiate the transfer.
Email notification is received at the start of the transfer and at the completion of the transfer of iPhone photos to Google account. The status of migration requests can be checked at privacy.apple.com/account. The request can be aborted at any stage of the transfer process.
The entire process of “moving” photos and videos from the iPhone gallery will take 3 to 7 days. Before raising a request, keep in mind that there are few exceptions flagged by Apple. It will not transfer smart albums, Live Photos, metadata, RAW images, and any content stored external to proprietary storage.
The migration of the iPhone gallery to Google Photos will not delete the original pictures and videos. They can be located on iCloud whereas the copy on Google Photos will receive a postmark “Copy” appended to the names.
It is a welcome move from Apple and will save trouble of migrating media from iPhone gallery to any service.
