Finding and exporting your Google Photos data

What it holds

Google Photos stores photographs and videos alongside album and media metadata. Capture details may be embedded in the files, with additional information supplied separately during export.

Where Google Photos shows the size

1. Open Google Admin console > Menu > Storage with storage-management privileges.
2. Hover over the storage bar to isolate Google Photos usage from Drive and Gmail.
3. Review the ranked users list to identify relevant accounts; allow up to 24 hours for storage changes to appear.

Plan and admin role. The Storage administrator role or equivalent privileges exposes storage figures. Photos must be enabled as an additional service; changing Takeout availability requires the Service Settings administrator privilege.

Exporting the full history

1. Check Menu > Data > Data import & export > Google Takeout to confirm exports are permitted.
2. Have each user open Takeout, select Google Photos and choose ZIP or TGZ with a part size from 1 GB to 50 GB.
3. Select an email download link or supported cloud destination, then retrieve every archive part and keep the accompanying JSON metadata.

Takeout retains the stored media format and supplies metadata not embedded in media as JSON sidecars. Keep these alongside the files.

Archive preparation ranges from minutes to days. Links generally expire after seven days and allow five downloads per archive.

Repeat the process per account; a Photos library may mix business and personal media, so define the intended scope first.

You don't need to run an export to talk to us, and there's no need to clean it first — removing personal data is part of our work.