How to import photos to Apple Photos without duplicates (export from Google Photos)

I have been using Apple Photos and Google Photos apps simultaneously on my iPhone for a while. I am paying Apple for extra storage space, while I am not for Google and now Google keeps warning me about my free storage getting close to full... So I would like to stop using Google Photos and only use Apple Photos.


There are some photos on Google that aren't on my Apple account and I would thus like to import the missing ones from Google.


I am thinking of doing a full export of all the photos from Google and then import them into my Apple account... Will Apple identify the duplicates and only import those that are missing? Will the meta data like original date be kept and not only the import date?


Let me know!

Posted on Apr 17, 2024 11:56 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Apr 18, 2024 7:51 AM

If you have imported images to Photos and Google Photos and then exported them with their "original" or "takeout" settings, then the original metadata should be there. And when importing to Photos, it should see those Google Photos "takeout" images as duplicates and ignore them.


Things change if you have edited metadata (dates, locations etc) and then want to keep those edits.


Make a small test and tell us how it went.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 18, 2024 7:51 AM in response to j_vdc

If you have imported images to Photos and Google Photos and then exported them with their "original" or "takeout" settings, then the original metadata should be there. And when importing to Photos, it should see those Google Photos "takeout" images as duplicates and ignore them.


Things change if you have edited metadata (dates, locations etc) and then want to keep those edits.


Make a small test and tell us how it went.

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How to import photos to Apple Photos without duplicates (export from Google Photos)

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