Magpie Help
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Import photos from Google Drive

Export your Google Drive with Google Takeout and bring in the photos and videos, with the folder each one was in.

If your photos live in Google Drive, you can bring them in with a Google Takeout of Drive. This works the same way as Google Photos with Takeout: you ask Google for a copy, then hand that copy to Magpie.

Request your Drive export from Google

  1. Go to Google Takeout (takeout.google.com) and sign in with the Google account that holds your Drive. On the Imports page, Open Google Takeout takes you there.
  2. Google starts with every product selected. Deselect all, then tick only Drive.
  3. Set up the export:
    • Destination: have Google email you a download link.
    • Frequency: export once.
    • File type: .zip. Don’t choose .tgz; Magpie can’t read it.
    • File size: the largest size offered (50 GB), so there are fewer parts.
  4. Create the export. For a big Drive this can take a day or more, and Google emails you when it’s ready.

Google only keeps the download for a limited time, usually about a week. Download the parts soon after the email arrives.

Import it

  1. Open Imports from the sidebar.
  2. Choose Google Drive (Takeout).
  3. Select every .zip part at once, or the unzipped Drive folder if you already unzipped them. You don’t need to unzip anything. Keep the parts together, because a folder can be split across parts.
  4. Check the summary, then start the import.

Keep the tab open while it runs. See Follow an import while it runs.

If your Takeout holds both Drive and Google Photos, Magpie reads only the part for the card you chose and tells you so. Use the other card to bring in the rest.

What gets imported and what is left out

Magpie imports the photos and videos in your Drive. Everything else is skipped, and the import shows how many files it skipped:

  • Documents, spreadsheets, slides and PDFs. Google exports these as office files, and they aren’t photos.
  • Zip files inside your Drive. They are not opened, so photos packed inside them are not imported. Unzip them in Drive first, or import them from your computer with Upload from this device.
  • System files such as .DS_Store. They are not counted.

Files in “Shared with me” are not in Takeout

Google only exports the files you own. Anything under Shared with me is not in your Takeout, so it cannot be imported. Ask whoever shared it to send you a copy, or save a copy to your own Drive and export again.

Duplicates

If the exact same file is already in your library, it isn’t stored again. It is counted as already in your library, and it still remembers its own folder. The same photo in two Drive folders is stored once. See Duplicates, skipped and failed files.

Folder names can give a date

Scans often have no date inside the file. When a photo has no date of its own, Magpie looks at its folders. If the closest folder is named for a year, such as 1994 or 1994 Christmas, the photo gets an approximate date: 1 July of that year.

  • The date is marked as approximate, so you can find it and fix it later.
  • Only a year at the start of the folder name counts. Ranges such as 1990-1995, months and decades give no date.
  • Any date the file has itself, such as the one your camera recorded, always wins over the folder name.

Keep my folders

The Keep my folders switch is on by default. With it on, each folder in your Drive becomes a Folder in Magpie, and each photo goes in the folder it came from. See Folders.

  • The top folders Google adds to the export (Takeout and Drive) are not made into folders. Your own folders start below them.
  • Folders can go up to 10 levels deep. If a photo is in a deeper folder, it goes in the folder at level 10 and nothing is left out. When this happens, the finished import tells you how many files were placed that way, with a few examples.
  • Photos in the top level of your Drive go in no folder.
  • If you switch it off, the photos still come in, but no folders are made.
  • You need a role that can organize photos in the library. Without it, the photos are imported without folders and you are told so.

Imported before? Photos you imported earlier didn’t get folders. Import the same files again to build them. No photo is added twice: each one already in your library is just filed in its folders. A photo you took out of a folder, or a folder you deleted, comes back when you import the same files again.