Move Google Photos to your own bucket

Google Photos is a nice viewer. It is a worse vault. If you want the pictures to outlast a plan change, they need to live in a bucket you own.

The why is already written: storing photos and videos forever. This post is the move. Takeout, a cheap bucket, file.rocks as the UI.

1. Export Photos with Google Takeout

Open Google Takeout. Deselect everything. Turn Google Photos back on. Leave Mail, Drive, and YouTube off. You want the pictures, not a dump of the whole account.

Create the export. Google builds zip archives. A big library takes hours, sometimes a day. It will email you when the files are ready. Download them.

Do not unpack this onto a laptop and call it done. The zips are the handoff. The bucket is the home.

2. Pick a bucket you own

You need S3-compatible object storage. Not another Photos clone.

For the price table, see the cheapest cloud object storage comparison. B2 is the cheap default. Wasabi is close. R2 and S3 work too.

This post does not walk the console again. If you do not have a bucket hooked up yet, follow how to connect a Backblaze B2 bucket and come back. Same idea if you already picked Wasabi, R2, or S3. Use the matching connect post.

3. Import the zip in file.rocks

Sign in at file.rocks. Open Settings, then Import. Stay on From zip.

Pick Google Photos (Takeout). That tile is the Photos exporter. Drop the zip. Click Start import. file.rocks unpacks it into your bucket. You do not unzip it on your laptop.

If Google split the export into more than one zip, import one part at a time.

Wait until it finishes. Open a few files and make sure they play.

You are not copying into file.rocks storage. file.rocks is the UI. The objects land in your bucket.

If you already unpacked the zip, drop the folders in Files instead. That is the fallback, not the main path.

4. What you lose

Be honest about this before you delete anything in Google.

You lose search the way Photos does it. No more "dog at the lake" or tap-a-face. A bucket is folders and filenames.

You lose shared albums as living shares. People you shared with in Photos will not keep a magic link into your new bucket. Send them files if they still need them.

You lose phone auto-backup. The Google Photos app will not keep stuffing new shots into your B2 bucket. New photos need a new habit: export again later, or import another zip through file.rocks.

You keep the files. You own the bucket. You can leave file.rocks, or B2, and the objects still sit there.

5. Then stop

Do not rebuild Google Photos. Do not hunt for a face-search plugin on day one.

Open the library in file.rocks when you want a picture. Keep the bucket paid. That is the whole point of storing photos forever.