Facebook has made its photo transfer tool available to all its users around the globe six months after its initial launch in Ireland. The tool helps users to make a copy of their photos and videos in the social networking site and move them to Google Photos.
“The photo transfer tool is now available globally to everyone on Facebook,” the company said in a blog post last Thursday.
Facebook users can now transfer their photos and videos directly to Google Photos and need not manually download and upload the photos themselves. The process will not remove the users’ data from their Facebook account and will only duplicate it to Google photos.
The company also said that it will give top priorities to privacy and security. It will encrypt the data transfer and ask people to enter their password before initiating the process.
How to copy your Facebook photos and videos to Google Photos
Log in to Facebook and click on the drop-down arrow at the top right side corner of the page. Click on ‘Settings & Privacy’ on the drop down box.
In the ‘Settings’ page click on ‘Your Facebook Information’ and then select ‘Transfer a Copy of Your photos or Videos’
Enter your Facebook password to continue.
After entering the password it will ask to choose the destination where the photos / videos are to be copied. It shows only ‘Google Photos’ as the destination as the service is limited to it as of now.
It then gives an option to choose between photos or videos to copy. Select one option and click ‘Next’
It will authenticate the import service.
After the authentication is complete it will ask to choose an account. Select the account to continue in Facebook.
Click ‘Allow’ to grant it permission to add photos / videos to the Google Photo library.
In the final step click ‘Allow’ to confirm. Once the process is complete it sends a notification to the user.
Facebook introduced the photo sharing tool in December last year in Ireland. It then expanded the services to Latin America, Asia Pacific, European Union, UK, Africa and South East Asia. Recently Facebook launched it in the US and Canada in April before making it available to all users now.
The photo transfer tool is a part of the Data Transfer Project which started in 2018 among Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter to improve data sharing between these companies and their users. Apple joined the initiative later in 2019. However, Facebook’s tool is available only to Google Photos as of now.
The company said that it believes in the principle of data portability, which gives people control and choice while also supporting innovation. It encouraged other companies to join the project to give more choices to people to store their data and continue to push data portability innovation further.
Facebook was among the top five downloaded apps last month, according to Sensor Tower, an app intelligence firm. It had more than 3 billion monthly active users across all its platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, in the first quarter of 2020.
