- It's easy to upload photos to Google Drive from your iPhone through the Google Drive app.
- You may want to upload photos to Google Drive if you are running out of space on your iPhone, or you want to share multiple or larger image files.
- This story is a part of Business Insider's Guide to Google Drive.
iPhone users may not have an affinity for Android products, but it's no secret that many of Google's free services are simply too useful to resist.
Google's cloud services and accompanying apps are extremely helpful for work, school, and other projects. Google Drive can house documents, video, audio, and images — and it's easily compatible with an iPhone.
Uploading photos to Google Drive is a particularly good skill to master, as your iPhone doesn't always have the capacity to host or send larger image files.
Here's how to do it.
Check out the products mentioned in this article:
iPhone 11 (From $699.99 at Best Buy)
How to upload photos to Google Drive from your iPhone
1. Start by downloading the Google Drive app on your iPhone, if you haven't already.
2. Open the Google Drive app.
3. In the bottom right corner, you'll see a multicolored "+" icon. Tap it.
4. Tap "Upload," then "Photos and Videos." Make sure your image file is an uploadable format. Image types supported by Google are .JPEG, .PNG, .GIF, .BMP, .TIFF and .SVG.
Under create new, select "Upload." If you create a Folder for the photos first, you'll name it, open it, then tap the same "+" icon again to add photos. Emma Witman/Business Insider5. Go into your iPhone's Albums and select the photos you'd like to add to Google Drive.
6. Once uploaded, you can quickly find your photos with the "Locate" link that will appear on the bottom of your screen.
Google will provide a link to locate your photos once uploaded. You can also create a unique folder for the photos beforehand to stay organized. Emma Witman/Business InsiderGoogle only allocates 15 GB for free use on Drive, but you can pay for up to 30 TB of extra storage.
If you need more storage but aren't ready to pony up, Google also offers ways to save space when adding photos in Drive.
Related coverage from Tech Reference:
How to change your Gmail password on your iPhone using the Gmail app
How to import Google contacts to your iPhone through a Gmail account, to properly sync all of your contacts
How to sync a Google Calendar with your iPhone's built-in calendar app
How to share your location on an iPhone in 4 different ways
Emma Witman is an Asheville, NC-based freelance journalist with a keen interest in writing about hardware, PC gaming, politics, and personal finance. She is a former crime reporter for a daily newspaper, and has also written extensively about bartending for Insider. She may or may not judge your drink order when behind the bar. Follow her on Twitter at @emwity.
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Google Drive is a service from Google where you can save your data such as photos and videos. Nowadays, Google Drive is considered to be one of the safest places to store images, since it not only can save them without worrying about the loss in case of hardware crash and natural disasters, but also offers applications for Windows PCs, Macs as well as phones.
Through web and desktop applications, users can effectively access and download photos from Google Drive to local devices manually and automatically. However, there is no absolutely safe place, and Google Drive is no exception. Before learning how to download photos from Google Drive, you should know the importance of downloading them to your local devices.
1. Data Protection
Many people have lost their photos in Google Drive due to their own mistakes. Therefore, it is not safe enough to store your data in just one place. The pictures stored in Google Drive also need to be backed up to add a layer of protection.
2. Limitation of Storage Space
Starting from June 1, 2021, once you exceed the 15GB of free storage space, you will need to pay for bigger storage space when using Google Drive. If you want to continue using the service for free, you should back up some of your photos to your computer, Mac, or phone to free up Google Drive’s storage space, which could manage Google Drive storage well.
How To Download Photos from Google Drive to Computer/Mac
We've learned the reason why we should download photos from Google Drive to local. Now you may wonder how to download to hard drive. Here are 3 simple ways to do so, if you are interested, keep reading!
Way 1: How to Download Pictures from Google Drive to Computer/Mac via its Desktop App?
Step 1: You need to download a desktop application of Google Drive called Backup and Sync.
Step 2: Sign in to your Google
Drive account, and complete the settings with the guidance.
Step 3: You should check “Sync My Drive to this computer”, and choose whether sync everything or just some folders to your local devices.
Way 2: How to Save Pictures from Google Drive to Computer/Mac via Official Webpage?
However, sometimes you can't successfully sign in to your Google Drive desktop application for various reasons, and figuring out why your login fails may take longer than it takes to download pictures. In this case, you could download photos from Google Drive to your local devices by its official web app. The detailed steps are as follows:
Step 1: Go to
Google Drive and sign in.
Step 2: Left-click to select the image you plan to download.
Step 3: Press the “3 dots” icon on the right upper side and click on “Download”.
Bonus Tips:
1. If you have several photos to download, you could create a folder and move those pictures to that folder, then you could click to download the folder.
2. Also, you can hold down the “CTRL” on Windows and “Command” on Mac on your keyboard and left-click the photos to select multiple photos that you plan to download.
3. You may wonder how to download all photos from Google Drive. Although Google Drive doesn’t have the feature of selecting all with one click, you could press “Shift” on your keyboard and left-click the first and the last photo to select all. Then you can download all pictures easily and quickly.
Way 3: How to Download Photos from Google Drive to Computer/Mac via MultCloud?
If you just want to download a small number of photos, you can follow Way 2. However, it is not suitable for you if you decide to download a lot of photos, because the download process is affected by the network connection. If the network is interrupted, the whole download process will restart all over again, which could drive you crazy. In this situation, what should you do?
Here you could use the third-party tool, MultCloud, to solve this problem. Being a professional cloud file manager, MultCloud aims to help users manage and protect their data on cloud drives in just one platform.
MultCloud has the following advantages:
1. Secure and Efficient. MultCloud accesses cloud drives with OAuth authorization and does not save your account and password information as well as your data in any of your cloud drives.
2. Useful Features. MultCloud provides you various and useful features that help you manage your cloud drives efficiently, including “Cloud Transfer”, “Cloud Sync” and “Remote Upload”.
3. Popular Clouds Supported. MultCloud supports many popular cloud drives in the market such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, FTP, G Suite and so on.
4. Cost Effective. MultCloud offers generous functions for free users such as scheduled transfer, sync or backup from one cloud drive to another. Meanwhile, MultCloud also provides the best price for paid users.
Through those effective features of MultCloud, you can download plenty of photos to local devices efficiently. Now, let’s have a look at the detailed steps:
Step 1: Open the official website of MultCloud and sign up freely by your email. You can also create a temporary account by clicking “Try without signing up”.
Step 2: You are supposed to click on “Add Cloud” to add Google Drive to this platform.
Step 3: Now, you could tab “Google Drive” to select the photos you plan to download. Right-click the photo, and you could then click “Download” on the upper side. Now, all you need to do is to wait for the process.
Bonus Tips:
1. You don’t need to supervise the download process since MultCloud can continue the process in the background even if the network is not good.
2. With MultCloud, you can also transfer photos and files from Google Drive to another, for example, moving files from Google Drive to OneDrive. Then you can delete those photos and files in Google Drive to free up its space.
How To Download Photos from Google Drive to Android
Since the computer is not that portable, it is not so easy to access pictures stored in your computer or Mac. In this situation, you can use your cell phone to view those photos downloaded from Google Drive. Then, how should you download pictures from Google Drive to your phone? The following steps can be your reference:
Step 1: You should install Google Drive on your phone and sign in.
Step 2:
There are 4 tabs at the bottom side. You should select the right-most icon called “Files”. Then click on “My Drive”, and you will see all the files and folders here.
Step 3: Long hold on to the picture you want to download from Google Drive to Android and then press other photos in the same way to select. Next, you should press the “3 dots” icon at the right-upper side to choose “Download”.
In the End
Anyway, after reading this article, you have learned several easy and convenient ways on how to download photos from Google Drive to local devices. In a word, if you want to download a few photos, you could use the desktop or web app of Google Drive; if you have lots of photos to download, then MultCloud is better to help you complete the download process efficiently.