Q: Google Photos (Desktop Uploader) and  Photos for Mac?

I had a bit of trouble with the Google uploader picking up the photos in the iPhoto library - it seemed to get stuck on the thumbnails and not continue. This was my work around:

1. Open the iPhoto database in iPhoto
2. Select all the Events
3. Exported the images as Originals with subfolder format = Event Name. Google Photos tags the photos in each subfolder with the event name, and then it becomes searchable.
4. Point the Google Photos uploader to the folder containing all the events.

Note: it had some trouble when there were sub folders within folders (I had multiple iPhoto libraries that I exported to one main Google folder, and it had some trouble with one of the sub folders). Now I've just split each iPhoto library into it's own folder containing all the Events, and point the uploader to each folder, which in turn contains all the events for that iPhoto library. Hope that helps.

were you guys able to auto backup png files? it doesn't seem to upload screenshots. but when i place a jpg file in the same folder with my other png files, it'll upload the jpg, but the jpg only. this leads me to suspect the uploader doesn't support png files. correct?

Yes, I found that as well.  In a way, I kind of appreciated that.  I prefer my screenshots segregated from my actual photos (and have a smart album in Photos to find them all together in one group.) 

I'm not sure if Google Photos Uploader skipping over them is a feature, or lack of one, but in the end I've rationalized it as a good thing, I suppose.

Now that the Google Photos Backup (desktop uploader) app sent my entire Photos library to Google's cloud, I figured I'd check out the Google Photos app for iOS, and I turned on its "Back up & Sync" function.  I wanted to see if I could get it backing up via LTE (since iCloud Photos only backs up via WiFi.)

Well, my iPhone's Google Photo attempt at "backing up and syncing" my iCloud Photo Library on my iPhone ended with a bit of a fail, on a few fronts. 

For starters, it never actually finished.  It took many days to work through my ~25,100 photo library.  It finally got down to 10 remaining today, and I watched with anticipation.  I wanted to see it finish!  I wanted to see how it would behave next.  Would I be able to backup new photos via LTE?  And how would those sync to Photos later when on WiFi?  How would deletions from Google Photos be handled?  Would they sync back to Photos?  So many questions. 

Well, I never got that far.  It stopped at 10 photos remaining and refused to continue.  I stopped the sync and started it again, I force quit the app, I restarted the iPhone.  Over the course of many hours, I somehow managed to get it down to 7 photos remaining.  But try as I might, I could never get it to go beyond those 7.  Argh.  So frustrating.

All along the while I should also mention, that there were a few photos in Google Photos I had inadvertently deleted.  I only noticed this when I saw them first missing in Photos for Mac.  So I recovered them in Photos for Mac.  And then a few hours later, I saw the "Do you want to sync these deletions" on Google Photos on my iPhone.    I thought that was odd, so I didn't confirm the deletion.  After all, I wanted to preserve those photos!  So I swiped away the card.  Sure enough, many hours later, the "do you want to sync these deletions" alert came back again.  And it would keep coming back, many times, over the course of two days.  It's as if it had "cached" this deletion request, and refused to let go of it.  Ultimately I just confirmed the deletion sync request, and then recovered the same photos back in Photos for Mac (again) and then I exported them from Photos, renamed them in the Finder, and imported them again... hoping Google Photos would see them as different photos, and not bug me about syncing that old, inadvertent delete request yet again.  Yeesh.  I don't know if those 5-6 photos were part of the 7 that Google Photos was unable to sync, or what.  I just know that by this time, I was really frustrated by it all.

All the while I would get iOS prompts that my "storage space was almost full" -- even though when I went to Settings -> General -> Usage to check, it would show I had 14+ GB free.  I would sometimes see that the amount of storage that iCloud Photos was using  has increased dramatically, but then it would decrease just as much shortly thereafter, all on its own.  So I do believe Google Photos was downloading the full photos in order to upload them, but then iOS was purging the full photo in favor of an optimized version (or thumbnail) per my Settings.  It certainly felt like a lot of "heavy lifting" was going on, and I'm not sure it was all worth it.  I also got the distinct feeling that, much like the Google Photos Backup (desktop uploader) application, it was written with iPhoto and Photo Stream in mind, for folks with only the most recent photos on their phone.  And NOT for iCloud Photo Library, which is effectively someone's entire photo library.  And I think Google Photos was struggling to make sense of this very large (and not entirely local) library, and how to "backup and sync" it all.  I don't think it was engineered with this new Apple service in mind.

The final disappointment came when I tried to troubleshoot, these last remaining 7 photos that refused to backup.  So I toggled off "backup and sync" in the Google Photos.  (I might have also deleted the app and reinstalled it, I can't remember -- it's all a blur.)  What I do know is, I saw the Assistant show me its progress, and it was starting all over, at ~25k photos to backup.  Noooo thank you.  I toggled it off again, and won't be using Google Photos to backup and sync my iCloud Photos from my iPhone for a long while again.  I'll just use the desktop utility to upload to Google from Photos for Mac, and the iOS app to check on things.  Given my experience with the persistent (and unwanted) deletion sync request, I'm sure I'll even be treading carefully with that, as well.

Anway, sorry for the long post, but I just wanted to share my experiences for the benefit of anyone else who is tinkering with these same specific ingredients.

One thing I'll point out is that when you delete and reinstall Google Photos it will initially show that your whole photo library has to be uploaded. This isn't truly the case, however. It goes through all your photos and will skip the ones that have already been uploaded. I know this bc I deleted the app and reinstalled. It went through my already uploaded photos faster than it would if it were actually uploaded all of them, and then it stopped and slowed again went it got to my recent photos/videos that hadn't already been backed up to Google Photos.

Cool, good to know.  But are you referring to the Google Photo Backup utility for Mac OS?  Or the Google Photos app for iOS?  Because my experience, at least, shows that wasn't true for the latter...

Apple Photos / iCloud Photo Library and Google Photos may create additional mischief when used together.

Let's assume a person activates iCloud Photo Library and then chooses to optimize for space on their device (e.g., on their iPhone, sending the originals to apple's iCloud but preserving smaller versions on the phone).

Let's also assume that person intends to use Google Photos for a redundant backup.

Then it seems, maybe somewhat dependent on timing, that there is a significant risk that Google Photos will backup the smaller, compressed versions of the local photos, leaving users assuming that Google Photos is backing up their originals, when it may not be.

I hope I am, and may well be, missing something.

I have the same question and this is where my search took me. If you don't like the questions being posted just leave. There's no need to be rude to people asking legitimate questions.

I was referring to Google Photos for iOS. Strange that your experience wasn't the same as mine. Maybe your problem was fixed in an app update?

Fortunately, iOS is intelligent enough to download originals of the requested photos in the background before they are backed up to Google Photos (or Dropbox or Flickr or any other service). At least that's been my experience.

well it seems its only me and a couple other users having troubles...

i have my library on an external HD, i can actually see my new photo library from the new photos app i can show package contents and tag the masters folder...

when i go to the google photos preferences i choose the add folder, I select the masters folder locted on the External HD and nothing happens...

it wont even show even for a minute as the selected folder... is someone else having this issue?

i tried using the tag method, i tried creating an alias and even drag and dropped the folder to the google photos site as recommended on google photos site...

this is all i see both before and after selecting the masters folder:

I have both Google Photos and Flickr installed on my Mac. While both were able to backup all existing photos to their clouds, I realized that any new photos that I add to Apple Photos App are not detected and hence not backed up by Google Photos. Flickr does it successfully. I checked Google Photos settings and they do have reference to Photos library master folder. I even removed and readded it. Google Photos went through my entire photo library yet again but still couldn't find any new photos to backup.

Since this thread seems to have some helpful info about Mac Photos and Google Photos, I'll post my question here:

I got the Google Photos Desktop Uploader going on backing up all the images in my Photos library. But, the number it said it was going to upload was > 2x the number of photos in my library and when I looked at what was being uploaded it was every picture I had ever downloaded onto my computer - even ones that I had deleted from the Photos app. I know I can't be the only one that only keeps about half of the pictures I take and there's no reason to back up the pictures I don't want to keep. Is there a folder I can point the Google Photos Desktop Uploader towards that will only upload the images I have actually kept in my Photos library?

My Photos.Google.Com site is showing duplicates and in some cases triplicates of EVERY PHOTO I have.  I have the desktop uploader and the iphone app for Google and it would appear to me that it has NO IDEA ABOUT DUPLICATES and simply loads them all.  And it also would appear to be loading iCloud Photo Library content as well, resulting in triplicates!

This whole cloud photo sync business is a mess.  Too many vendors and none of this stuff works well together.  Pick a solution and stay with it.

I can examine the meta data on the photos.google.com site and see that the duplicate are in fact;

1) two version with the same file name (a meta data EXIF date and time ex. 2015-07-28 3.55.21), but different sizes, one full size the other scaled down

and

2) The third copy has a different name using the original file name IMG_5256.JPG and is full size.

So my google photos is FUBAR...