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Google Takeout Phase 1 — Request Export

Note

This step is only required if you want to migrate from Google Photos to Immich. If you're starting fresh without migrating existing photos, skip ahead to Step 1: Create Unraid Shares.

Tip

The Google Takeout export can take a while (half a day for ~100GB in my experience), so it's best to start this early — you can continue with the Immich installation while waiting for the export.

Purpose: Use Google Takeout to export your photos and videos from Google Photos including metadata. For exporting from Google Takeout, you can choose between a zip and tar file that you can extract and then using tools to upload to Immich.

Depending on:

  • Your internet connection speed
  • possibly metered internet connection (some ISPs throttle download speeds after a certain amount of data downloaded)

... choose between zip and tar for your export.

The convenient choice: zip (recommended)

zip has a larger file size but is supported by PhotoMigrator out of the box, taking care of the extraction process. See chapter Google Takeout Phase 3: PhotoMigrator for more details.

The smaller and faster choice: tar

But if you have a large library and/or slower internet speed, I would recommend choosing tar for better compression and faster extraction times. You can easily extract tar files on Unraid using the terminal or a Docker container. We got that step covered in chapter Pre-Work: Google Takeout Phase 2.5 - Extract tar Archives.

  1. Go to Google Takeout
  2. Sign in to your Google account
  3. Deselect all products using the "Deselect all" option
  4. Then scroll down or search for "Google Photos"
  5. Select only Google Photos for export.
  6. Scroll to the bottom and click "Next step"
  7. Choose your delivery method (e.g., "Send download link via email")
  8. Choose the export frequency: "Export once"
  9. Choose the file type: zip or tar
  10. Choose the file size: "50GB" (Google will split the export into multiple files if your library exceeds this size.)
  11. Hit "Create export" and wait for the process to complete. You will receive an email with a download link once the export is ready.