How To Transfer From Flickr to Google Photos?

All my photos and video in Google Photos. Look at the years on the right-side.

So what's the plan?

These are the steps in outline:

Step 1: Request your Flickr Data. using their Your Flickr Data tool.

Step 2: Prepare your setup. Get a reliable PC or Laptop and check it's capable of doing the task.

Step 3: Download all your Media (Photos and Videos) and Meta-Data (Account Files) files from Flickr that you requested earlier.

Step 4: Create a Google Cloud Project that will allow you to upload your Media directly to your Google Photos account

Step 5: Download and run a Command-Prompt App. My FlickrToGooglePhotos.exe is completely free, but I'd be grateful you'd buy me a coffee if everything works out for you (see link at end of page).

This App re-applies Meta-Data: the Location data (latitude and longitude) and any Description (up to 1000 characters) you put into Flickr for each photo which is downloaded by the Your Flickr Data tool. It also handles any network errors that might occur, delays and throttles the upload rate to comply with Google's policies, and can restart from where it left off it you have a power cut or lose your uploading progress at any stage.

Let's get to it!

Step 1: Request your Flickr Data

Log into your Flickr Account and click your Profile Image, then Settings. Under Your Flickr Data, you can click Request my Data, and Flickr will zip up all your Media and send you an email when you come and download it all.

The preparation of the Zip files by Flickr took about 24 hrs for my 84,000 media files - so your time for preparation could be estimated by those statistics.

Obviously you need to stop uploading photos and videos to Flickr from now on as anything you upload from this point onwards won't be included in the Your Flickr Data downloads. Remove the Flickr App from your phone.

While that's preparing, you can move onto Step 2...

Step 2: Prepare your setup

It is likely to take anything from several hours to several weeks to perform the migration.
I had around 84,000 images and videos to migrate and it took about 2 weeks.

I would absolutely recommend getting a dedicated PC or better yet an old Laptop (like my Book 2 sat ontop of my Desktop) to perform the task as a laptop will handle power cuts better.

If you try to do it on your "daily drive" PC, you likely to accidently close an important window and lose your position, or it will reboot itself at some point or you'll connect to a VPN and the connection will drop all transfers.

Check your Disk Space

When you login to Flickr it will show you how many Gb of Media you have. This correlates with how much space the downloaded Zip files provided by the Your Flickr Data tool. You will need probably about 10% more in addition as the Zips are expanded one-by-one and all the Meta-Data files need to be available

I suggest you pause Windows Updates to prevent the computer restarting itself while it's busy transfering your photos. You can do this in Settings, Windows Updates and Pause (for a week).

You will need to decide what drive and folder you are going to perform the download and upload operation. If you have enough room on your C:\ drive you must create a folder there, for example, C:\FlickrToGooglePhotos and within that a folder called "download" e.g. C:\FlickrToGooglePhotos\download

If you have an external drive, it will map to another letter e.g E:\ You can use the top level folder like so, and within that create a folder called "download" e.g. E:\download

I'm going to refer to this folder as your working folder in the following steps.

You can now download FlickrToGooglePhotos.zip from my Google Drive. Unzip the contents into your working folder for running in Step 5.

Power supply reliability

If you're using a laptop (where the battery still has a little life), you'll be able to continue uninterrupted if you have a power cut.

If you using a desktop then having a UPS is highly recommended.

Speed & reliability of your Internet

Don't forget that connecting and disconnecting from a VPN will cause an upload to fail midway - this is another reason to use a dedicated machine to perform this task.

External Hard Drive

If you are short of disk space, you can try and process each Flickr Zip indivdually or in groups that your disk-space will allow.

I'd recommend however investing in an external disk drive that will make life a lot easier - and you can keep the Flickr Zips on the disk as an additional back up.

Step 3: Download your Flickr Data

Log back into your Flickr Account. On the Account & Subscription panel you should now have lots of download links.

Download all the Account Data files into the Drive and Folder you created in the previous step, e.g. E:\download

If you have sufficient disk space (highly recommended) then also download all the Photos and videos zip files. See next section if you don't.

I was able to download three at a time using Chrome.

Keeping track of downloads

If you don't have enough space for all the Photos and videos zip files, then you will have to just download as many as you can. Remember to leave some "working space" as these files will be unzipped one by one and then uploaded so probably around 10gb should be sufficient.

At the bottom of File Explorer you should have a count of the number of files (xx Items), so at the end of this process that should match the number of files available for you to download in Flickr.

It is important that you download ALL the Account Data files which have filenames like 72157723590781607_cb3515fcc9a3_part1.zip, as these contain the Meta-Data like Location and Description which you will want re-attaching to the Media files when they uploaded to Google Photos. All of the Account Data files zipped contents will need to be available so they can be re-attached later in the process by my FlickrToGooglePhotos.exe program, as each Media file is uploaded.

Downloading all the data-download-1.zip type files optional, and highly recommended as then then FlickrToGooglePhotos.exe program can run without interruption, and you won't have to keep coming back and deleting and downloading the next Zip file.

You could just unzip and upload the Media files you have now by dragging them into https://photos.google.com/ but the photos will not contain any Location or Description data, and, in my experience, any more than a few dozen photos uploaded in this fashion will often result in a "failed upload" of some kind, and then you have to dig through to see which one failed and try again.

Step 4: Create Google Cloud API Key

Google allows programatic access to Google Photos, which will be needed for my .exe to upload the Media files off your hard disk. To ensure authentication (credentials) you need to request access to your Google Photos via Google Cloud. Proceed to https://console.cloud.google.com/

Click to Console

Once you are logged into to Google Cloud look for the Console Link, or type in https://console.cloud.google.com/ into the address bar.

Google Cloud Console is a little bit complex, and you need to look for Create New Project link in there.

Create new Project

I was able to Create a New Project, and give it a name; you can call it "Flickr to Google Photos", although the name is up to you.

I was asked to create a Billing Account, but we will be working within Google's limits so you won't get charged anything.

Turn on Google Photos API

You need to click APIs & Services, then + Enable APIs and Services

Search the API Library and Add Google Photos Library API

In the Search box I typed Photos, and the Google Photos Library API appeared

Enable the API

You will be presented with a large ENABLE button. Press it.

Create Credentials

You need to give access to yourself for uploading your Photos. Click Create Credentials

Select Credentials Type

You need to select User Data: Data belonging to a Google user, like their email address or age. User consent required. This will create an OAuth client.

Click Next

Oauth Consent Screen

Enter Flickr to Google Photos as the App Name, although this is up to you.

Enter or Select your own Email Address as the App developer emails.

Add Scopes

Click to Add or Remove Scopes, then you can Filter by Photos Library API and select .../auth/photoslibrary.appendonly Add to your Google Photos library

Place a tick in that box and then Update to save the selection

Configure Oauth Client ID

You need to select Application Type of Deskop App, and you can leave the Default Name.

Press Create to get to the next step.

Download the Creditials File

Download the file onto your hard disk and don't forget to press Done to complete this process.

Move and Rename JSON file

My download was called client_secret_977834643824-1id559irpn6ic5qugdta0dj1d0pdfeqt.apps.googleusercontent.com.json

You need to locate where the file is on your hard disk (probably in Downloads) and move it to your working folder and then rename it to the simpler client_secret.json

Add yourself as Testing User

So you can use the API you need to add yourself as a testing user.

Click Audience and then + Add Users

Add your own email address and Press Save

Step 5: Run FlickrToGooglePhotos.exe

If you haven't already download FlickrToGooglePhotos.zip from Google Drive. Unzip the contents into your working folder. It contains an exectutable program called FlickrToGooglePhotos.exe which runs from the command-prompt. You can access the command-prompt in many ways, but a simple way from File Explorer is just the letters CMD into the location box and press enter.

Command Prompt

If you start the Command Prompt from elsewhere you will need to navigate to your working folder.

In this example my working folder is the root or top-level folder of my E:\ drive.

All you need to do it type the filename FlickrToGooglePhotos.exe, press Enter and it will run

Authenticate with Google Photos

The FlickrToGooglePhotos.exe will then let you authenticate with Google Photos by entering your password into the Google site.

Google hasn’t verified this app

You've just created this App yourself in Google Photos API and it's not published, so Google haven't verified it.

You need to click Continue not Back to safety.

On the next page confirm that the App can only Add to your Google Photos library and press Continue.

You will get a message The authentication flow has completed. You may close this window.

Which you should do to see the Command Prompt output

Starting the App with Defaults

The App will first ask you to enter Y and press Enter to agree to my disclaimer.

It will then request the default Google Photo upload limits, you should just press Enter unless you've contacted Google and increased these default limits.

It will then create a couple of temporary folders for the Unzipped media and Meta-data, and then unzip the Meta-data into one of the folders.

Monitor app running process

If all is well it will then progress to uploading the Media to Google Photos. You can open Google Photos website and see them appearing there, or open the App on your phone and see likewise. Note you may have to press F5 on the website or close and re-open the app to see new Media files - particularly with the Map view on the Phone Apps.

You will see progress indicated for example. 259 of 500 media files uploaded.

When a new data-download-n.zip file is started it will delete all previous temporary Media files and upzip the next file.

If it encounters an upload error it will either retry or in some cases it will abort. If this happens just run the FlickrToGooglePhotos.exe again (you can press up-cursor key and it will reappear)

The Google Photos API has a 2 rate limits, up to 30 media files per minute and a maximum of 10,000 per day. These are the defaults and you can ask Google to increase them by emailing Sales. I didn't bother as I suspect they would ask you for money, and I only had a week or 10 days worth of uploads to do.

When one of these limits is breached the App will inform you and wait the required time. Google calculates the "daily-limit" in the Pacific time zone, so it will wait until midnight in that zone until it restarts.

If you have to turn off your computer or restart it, to continue just open Command-Prompt again at the working folder location and run the App again.

If you don't have enough disk space to download all your Flickr Photo and Video files in one go you can simply wait for the app to finish. Delete all data-download-n.zip files that have been completed from the \download folder, download more data-download-n.zip files into that folder and start the App again.

Please check as many Media files in Google Photos as you need to feel confident that all the data is being transfered correctly - I offer no warranties! - and certainly keep your Flickr account going, and keep the downloaded files for a while.

Good Luck with your transfer! I love seeing my family photos and videos in Google Photos now, and I'm sure you will too. If I've been able to help you out with this web page, the information I've provided, and the App you've downloaded I'd be happy if you bought me a coffee by using my PayPal donate link via my company Kbytes.co.uk, any donation gratefully received.

Thank you,

Karl

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