Free unlimited storage, automatic backup and some of the useful editing effects make the Google Photos app one of the worthwhile apps for managing your pictures on your favorite Android device. Yes, Google Photos natively works best on Android devices, where it’s also most used. However, not many users are aware that they can actually use Google’s photo-storing service on Windows desktops, as well. In this post, we will share a tip to enable you to add Google Photos to the Photos App in Windows 11/10.
Add Google Photos to Windows Photos App
Google Photos is a photo gallery from Google that stores your photos and videos to Google Drive. So, if you have Google Drive app installed on your PC, good! If not, download the app to enable you to add Google Photos to Windows 10 Photos App.
Also, enable the ‘Sync’ feature of the app so you can choose which folders are synced to your desktop or PC. Now launch ‘Google Drive’ app, hit the ‘Gear’ icon visible in the upper right-hand corner and choose the ‘Settings’ option under it.
Next, when the settings window opens, scroll down to find ‘Create a Google Photos folder’ option and enable it. Wait for a few minutes as the Google Photos folder gets added to your Google Drive. Make sure that you have selected ‘Google Photos folder’ as one of the folders if you’ve enabled selective sync option in Google Drive on your PC or a Desktop.
Having done this, open the Windows 10 Photos App and navigate the mouse cursor in the upper right corner of the app window.
Hit the 3 dots menu and select settings option available under it. Thereafter, scroll down to the ‘Sources’ section and click ‘Add a folder’ option.
Now, from the Select Folder window, choose ‘Google Photos’ folder visible under Google Drive folder.
Finally, click ‘Add this folder to Pictures’ and wait for few minutes for the folder to populate.
Now all your Google Photos will appear under Windows 10 Photos App!
Syncing the Photos from GDrive to the desktop will download all the photos and videos stored on the cloud, to your hard drive, and some people may not have high capacity storage options on phones and PCs, so keep this in mind.
Now read: Best Google Photos tips and tricks to edit images.
Hm, you just showed how to add a local folder, that ist synced to gdrive, to Windows 10 Photos.
That´s not really adding google photos to it.
Great idea, but when Google Drive gets linked to Google Photos, the free unlimited space of Photos itself means your Google Drive will need it too, but the thing is, Google Drive does not offer free unlimited space at all so you’d have to start paying for subscription space with your Google Drive, that is, once it becomes full to the brim with your Photos.
Google drive still offers 15 GB free space. That’s a modest amount to accommodate most of the pictures. I believe.
That’s true, but that 15GB doesn’t just include images, it’s all your files too if you let it, & to get anywhere near that kind of space on OneDrive for Windows 10 Photos anyway you have to subscribe to extra space or Office 365, so the free limit, realistically for that is 5GB anyway (something to be aware of). Shame we can’t have it same unlimited both ways but we’re really looking forward to the new Windows Story Remix which looks superb.
Dude, syncing the Photos from GDrive to the desktop will download all the photos and videos stored on the cloud, to your hardrive; people nowadays do not have high capacity storage options on phones and PC’s.
It’s important that you add that info to your readers :-) cheers
Yes, hope things change with the rollout of windows story remix
Thanks for reminding!
I couldn’t help but wonder why you or anyone would want to do this. and I must ask would each photo occupy twice the space on a harddrive or are these virtual copies or links to same photo?
1. if i download photos from google photo, can I add metadata captions either in google drive or in windows photo app, and will the captions synch back up to google photos in the cloud? can I drag/drop files to folders this way?
that’s my short simple question, my longer one follows:
2. can I view my photos in a ‘file manager’ big/small thumbnails way, select many photos across many dates, add one caption to many, drag them (or a virtual copy of them) into a folder, and upload them to google photo or whatever to share where’ albums’ are automatically created for the ‘folders’ and captions are retained. is there no free service? must i buy lightroom or use smugmug type service to do this?
I was actually looking for the opposite – how to get “google photos” as a sharing option on windows Photos app. I’m satisfied with the windows app but I want to be able to share photos to Google within the app without having to drag and drop them from the folder. Not interested in having it back up ALL my photos which is what the Google app itself would do. I just want to share selected photos with friends using Google.