You can now easily transfer photos between iCloud and Google Photos

A new data transfer tool makes it much simpler to switch between iPhone and Android or vice versa.

This tool is backed by the Data Transfer Initiative and basically aligns Google’s and Apple’s main photo library apps behind the scenes, making it possible to move a full library from one app to another.

You can still use the setup tools in both phone ecosystems to transfer photos, but this is for people who want to do it post-setup.

Moving from Apple to Google

• Sign in with your Apple account on the company’s privacy website. 
• Choose the option to ‘Transfer a copy of your data’
• Select Google Photos from the drop-down menu
• Choose if you want to transfer photos, videos, or both
• Sign in with your Google account and then follow the remaining steps

Keep in mind that this will likely require a lot of cloud storage. For me, it says I need 283GB of Google Cloud storage to fit all my photos and videos.

Moving from Google to Apple

Make sure you have iCloud Photos and iCloud Drive turned on. You also need to make sure you have enough cloud storage available.

• Open the Google Takeout website
• Choose to transfer all your photos or just specific albums
• Select Apple – iCloud Photos from the drop-down menu
• Sign in with your Apple account
• When the transfer is complete, you will see a new album called Import from Google Photos

You can learn more about the tool on Apple’s support site. That said, for me, I don’t see Apple on the drop-down menu yet.

• Source: Apple, (1), Google, Data Transfer Initiative