Google Takeout!...And possibly your photos.

I know we've all been there.  Trying desperately to get all the pictures out of someone's iCloud account.  It's frustrating.  Thankfully using the iCloud for PC app seems to work and we can, relatively, easily get those photos into a computer from the mystery that is the internet. Today though, this isn't about iCloud, it's about Google/Android.  What happens when you're in the same situation on Android.  Someone has been using Google photo backup or uploading all of their photos to Google Photos and has deleted them from the phone.  They want their photos on the computer but doing so requires selecting each individual photo in small groups and downloading.  The answer, Google Takeout!!

Google Takeout is a service offered by Google which allows you to download basically any information you have ever uploaded to the cloud via your Google account. Be it a list of your searches, YouTube videos, Hangouts messages, Google Drive files and of course, photos.

Step 1: Navigate to https://takeout.google.com/, login to your account if you aren't already

Step 2: Select which item(s) you would like to download.  If you have a large amount of the selected item(s) it may take some time for Google to prepare your download.  Thankfully, you don't even need to leave the page open or your computer on!  Make sure to select how you want your files delivered.  This brings us to the next point.

Step 3: Get your files.  Google will email you when the files are ready. You have a few options for how you would like to receive your files.  A neat .zip format where you can even select the size of the .zip files you would like to receive in a range between 1 GB and 50 GB archives.  Or you can have them added directly to your favorite cloud drive service, Google Drive, Dropbox, or even OneDrive!  

So that's it.  If you want to get any files from google onto your local computer simply go to https://takeout.google.com/ and your files are just a few clicks away.