How to transfer photos from OneDrive to Google Drive and Google Photos

By Tom Westrick
published

If you want to move from a Windows laptop to a Chromebook — or if you're in the process of moving from Windows 10 Mobile to Android — you might want to move your cloud files from OneDrive to Google Drive. It's not required — you can get to your OneDrive files very easily on Android or Chrome OS. But Google's services are going to integrate better with Google's operating systems than Microsoft's services would.

Here's how to move your photos from OneDrive to Google Drive!

Download your photos from OneDrive

  1. Login to OneDrive on your desktop computer or your Chromebook.
  2. Select the Photos album.
  3. Click Download.

  1. Open your PC's Downloads folder.
  2. Right click the Photos folder, then click extract all.
  3. Click Extract.

Now, you have a copy of all of your OneDrive photos stored locally on your computer. Getting them into Google Photos is as easy as uploading the photos to Google Drive.

Upload the photos to Google Drive

  1. Login to Google Drive on your desktop computer. If you are using your Chromebook, you will already be signed in.
  2. Click New > Folder, and title it Google Photos.
  3. Inside this folder, click New, Folder Upload.
  4. Select the extracted folder containing your OneDrive photos.

Now the photos are uploaded to Google Drive, and you can view them inside the Google Photos application!

Have you ever switched cloud storage services? Let us know if you had any problems down below!

Tom Westrick
Tom Westrick
13 Comments
  • One note on uploading the images to Drive; the images will count against your quota in Drive. If you upload the photos in Photos, you can then move them from your Google Photos folder in Drive to wherever you wish, quota-free.
  • Exactly, it's definitely not as straight-forward as the article makes it out to be here. I encourage folks to do their homework in advance. There is some info from Google here on the differences: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/6156103?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesk... There are also a lot of threads floating about around the issues people have had mixing and matching. Personally, after years of phone swapping, navigating the transitions from Picasa Web Albums to Google+ Photos to Google Photos, and so forth, I found that what was 40-50gb worth of photos on my hard drive somehow amounted to nearly double that in my GP storage. As I had everything stored locally and organized into folders by year and date and synced to Onedrive already, I thought I'd just clear my GP and upload from scratch. It was a nightmare since google offers no way to just reset your photos and start from scratch and since their Backup and Sync desktop uploader is a cluster. After multiple attempts with different strategies, I finally ended out loading my entire library to a new SD card in a spare phone and uploading everything via the android GP app just by letting it sit for a few days. I don't have the nice, neat album structure I had from the Picasa days (man, I miss that tool), but I have everything in google photos now with no dupes and at least in the right chronological order. It was even kind of neat to have it pick back through everything and create new collages, memories, etc. Again, though... I say all that just to say that to a long-time Windows guy, Google's way of doing things here is far from simple.
  • Why would I want to do that? Everything from PC, my Windows Phones and my Windows 10 Mobile devices is stored there. Plus I have office 365. Only makes sense to to just flip on automatic upload to OneDrive on my Galaxy S8+ and disable Google Photos. Still a Microsoft and Windows fan. Running Microsoft Launcher with all the Microsoft apps and services running as well...and as many Google apps and services disabled as possible. 😁
  • My point exactly. With office365 giving me plenty of one drive space. Also, I can leave the quality of the pics at thier highest level and not downgrade them. Once you downgrade a photo's or mp3's quality you can't go back.
  • Yep!
  • I would never use OneDrive, (why would anyone pick OneDrive over Google Drive?) Google and Google Drive all the way. I can't stand most Microsoft products, the only reason I use Windows is because there isn't a better alternative anxiety use Chrome as I can't stand Edge or bing. Once Google gets Chrome OS up to speed, I'll eventually ditch Windows altogether. Google is better than Microsoft who suck balls and when I get my Pixel 2 XL I'll get unlimited storage for my photos and videos can your precious Microsoft offer that? Nope because Microsoft are too greedy to do something like that.
  • Wow such hate for Microsoft. Did they ruin your childhood or something?
  • I was just about to ask something like this. Seriously... Sounds like a grudge against MS like they did something to him personally...
  • Had free 90 GB of storage with windows and windows 10 Mobile, then when my Lumia 950XL broke I got a galaxy s8+ and got even more free storage was up to 130GB... Then got office 365 now at 1TB. That's plenty of storage for me plus I get the use of all of the office apps on all my families devices, integration with Xbox One apps and services, etc etc etc. Some prefer MS and some prefer Google. Mostly because that's what people are used to and have no desire to switch and have to learn a new ecosystem. Some others just have extreme product loyalty. And others feel like they have been personally taken advantage of or wronged by the opposing company. I personally think Google is just as money hungry, if not more so than MS, and just choose to stick with what I know, what my place of work uses for all their systems, and what I find the easiest to use...Windows 10, Microsoft Launcher, Office, Cortana, Edge, Bing, MSN News/Weather/Sports, SwiftKey keyboard, Microsoft Authenticator, Outlook Calendar and Mail, Skype, Groove, SharePoint, Microsoft To-do, Microsoft Translator and OneDrive 😁
  • Almost forgot OneNote 😁
  • There are many reasons to use onedrive over Google drive if people want to. Let's take even the basic one for me £7.99 on office 365 gets be full office and 1tb storage for 5 people, yes 5! 7.99 on Google drive would get me 1tb storage for one person. Clear value there. Another reason, word sync on all devices, super handy, especially as Windows 10 (stupidly!) Can't do native group emails so I send them on my phone instead.
  • Just stick with OneDrive. It works great on Android. Just turn off backup in Photos and turn on auto upload in OneDrive. Done. Now they still sync to your PC too.
  • Never. Microsoft sucks, Google is the best.