In the coming week, the tool, which is a component of the Data Transfer Initiative, will be made available to users.
A new tool from Google and Apple allows you to move photos from Google Photos to iCloud. The tool will expand Google Takeout’s export capabilities to include iCloud transfers as part of the Data Transfer Initiative (DTI). The announcement was first noticed by 9to5Mac.
The program will be released over the course of the next week. It automates the process of transferring photos from Google Photos to iCloud, saving you the trouble of downloading, uploading, or doing anything more than starting the process online. Depending on the size of the transfer, it could take a few hours to a few days, according to an Apple support page.
You will need to manually remove your photos from Google Photos if you choose to, as moving them from Google to iCloud won’t do that for you. Furthermore, kid accounts, Managed Apple ID accounts (managed by IT administrators), and iCloud accounts with Advanced Data Protection enabled are not eligible for the service.
The program is a follow-up to one that was released in 2021 and performs the opposite—it transfers your photos from iCloud to Google Photos.
In 2023, the DTI was introduced as a joint venture between Apple, Google, and Meta. Officially, it was established to further the objectives of the five-year-old open-source Data Transfer Project (DTP). Officially speaking, it’s probably no accident that the DTI was established a few months prior to the European Commission appointing its “gatekeepers” under the Digital Markets Act, and that the DTI’s objectives fit with the rules set forth by the regulatory body. (How exciting that is!)
When it launches (which is not now visible to us), you can start the process in Google Takeout. You can read the fine language in Apple’s and Google’s instructions in the interim.