How to switch from Google Photos to iCloud Photos with Apple’s official tool

Switching from Android to iOS—or vice versa—can be challenging because there’s always the chance you’ll end up losing data in the process. This could be due to a lack of an app, an incompatibility between the systems, or a minor bug.

While Apple offers Android users the Move to iOS tool and Google has a similar feature for iPhone users, the Mountain View, California company recently released a new tool to help you copy your photos and videos to a service outside Google.

What’s great about this feature is that you can transfer all the photo data, which means they will have the original resolution and all the information you might need to organize your iPhone library once you make that switch. This also comes three years after Apple released a similar tool to help transfer iCloud Photos content to Google Photos.

Here’s how to easily switch from Google Photos to iCloud Photos with the official Google tool:

• Go to your Google Account Dashboard
• Under  “Recently used Google services” or “Other Google services,” scroll to Photos and tap Transfer data
• Choose the data you want to copy, then tap Continue
• After you sign in to your Google Account and authorize Takeout, use the “Move To” button to select iCloud
• Tap Continue, then Agree and continue

Google says that once your photos and videos are copied, you will receive an email with a link to locate them in the new service.

These are the supported photo and video file types you can share from Google Photos:

• Photos: .jpg, .png, .gif, .webp, .avif and most RAW files.
• Videos: .mp4, .mov, .m4v, .mpg, mkv, .mod, .mmv, avi, .divx, .tod, .wmv, .asf, .3gp, .3g2, .m2t, .m2ts, and .mts files.

Google also notes that you can’t transfer photos and videos from an account for children under the applicable age in their country, accounts through work, school, or other organizations, or accounts with Advanced Protection turned on.