Migrate from Google Photos to Self-Hosted: Complete 2026 Guide

This guide assumes you've already decided to leave Google Photos and you want to know exactly how to do it without losing anything. It covers the full path from "I have nothing set up" to "Google Photos is gone, my library is intact". Total active time: about an hour, plus an overnight wait for Google's export. Still deciding? Read why Noodle Gallery beats Google Photos →

What you'll need before you start

• A machine to run Noodle Gallery on (NAS, mini PC, Raspberry Pi 5, old desktop, or a small VPS)
• Roughly twice your library size in free disk space (one copy of the originals, room for thumbnails and ML data)
• About an hour of attention spread across two sessions, plus the wait for Google's export
• Access to your Google account at takeout.google.com

Step 1 — Set up Noodle Gallery

Install Noodle Gallery first so it's ready to receive your photos when the export arrives. The install takes about five minutes if you already have Docker installed on your server.

1. Follow the installation guide to get Gallery running with Docker Compose.
2. Open the web UI at http://your-server:2283 and create the first admin account.
3. Make a note of the URL — you'll come back to it in Step 4.

You don't need to install the mobile app yet. The migration happens entirely in the browser. The mobile app is for what comes after Google Photos is gone — daily backup of new photos from your phone.

Step 2 — Request a Google Takeout export

Google Takeout is Google's official tool for downloading your data out of Google products. It's the most reliable way to get a complete copy of everything you've uploaded to Google Photos, with all the metadata that came with it.

1. Go to takeout.google.com while signed in.
2. Click Deselect all, then scroll down and tick Google Photos.
3. Click All photo albums included if you want to be selective about which albums to export — otherwise leave it as-is to export everything.
4. Click Next step.
5. For "Delivery method" choose Send download link via email.
6. For "Frequency" choose Export once.
7. For "File type & size" leave the file type as .zip and bump the file size up to 50 GB if your library is large — fewer parts to download.
8. Click Create export.

Google will start preparing the export immediately. You don't have to keep the page open; everything happens server-side.

Step 3 — Wait for the export email

This is the part nobody warns you about. Google's export queue is unpredictable. A 5 GB library might be ready in 20 minutes; a 200 GB library can take over a day. There's no progress indicator and no way to speed it up.

When the export is ready, Google sends an email with download links. The links expire after seven days, so download everything to a stable location as soon as you can — ideally directly onto the server you're going to import from, to avoid copying the data twice.

If your library is huge and Google splits it into multiple parts, you'll get one email with multiple download links. Download all of them.

Step 4 — Import via the in-browser wizard

With the Takeout zips downloaded and Noodle Gallery running, the import itself is the easiest part of the whole process.

1. Open Noodle Gallery in your browser and sign in.
2. Open the side menu and click Import → Google Photos.
3. Drag your Takeout .zip files into the import wizard. You can drop several at once if Google split your export into parts.
4. Click Start import.

The wizard reads each zip file in place — nothing is unpacked to disk first. Photos are extracted and ingested into Gallery's library, metadata sidecars are parsed, dates and GPS coordinates are reattached, favourites become favourites, and Google's album structure is recreated as Gallery albums.

The full mechanics of the wizard, including how it handles edge cases like deleted photos, archived photos, and "shared with me" content, are documented on the feature page. See how the import wizard works in detail →

Step 5 — Verify your library

Don't skip this step. Verifying takes 10 minutes and prevents heartbreak.

• Check the photo count. Compare Gallery's library size with what Google Photos showed. The numbers should be very close — slight differences (under 1%) usually mean Google deduplicated some images that Gallery has chosen not to.
• Check a few dates. Open photos from different years and verify the timestamps look right. Google Takeout occasionally writes the import date instead of the capture date for older photos — Gallery falls back to the EXIF data when it spots this, but it's worth a quick spot check.
• Check GPS. Open the map view and confirm photos appear in the right places. If you see a cluster of "null island" pins (latitude 0, longitude 0), some metadata didn't transfer cleanly and you may want to run the import again with the JSON sidecar handling enabled.
• Run face recognition. Google's face groupings don't transfer because they're computed server-side. Trigger Gallery's face detection job from Settings → Jobs → Face Detection → Run on All. Once it finishes, name a few people and Gallery will recognise them across the rest of your library.
• Check albums. Open the Albums view and confirm your Google albums are there with the right photos in them.
• Check favourites. Filter by Favourites and confirm the photos you'd starred in Google Photos are still marked.

Verification takes ten minutes. Skipping it can cost you years of memories.

Step 6 — Delete from Google Photos

Only do this once Step 5 looks good and you've used Gallery for a few days without missing anything. There's no rush. Google Photos will keep your library indefinitely, so leaving it there for a week of sanity-checking costs nothing.

When you're ready:

1. Go to photos.google.com.
2. Use bulk select (click the first photo, scroll to the bottom of your library, shift-click the last photo) and delete in batches.
3. Empty the Trash to actually free up the storage.
4. If you're done with Google entirely, you can also close the account at myaccount.google.com — but read Google's warnings first, since this also deletes Gmail, Drive, and YouTube.

Cancelling a Google One subscription is a separate step inside the Google One settings. Don't forget that one — the storage subscription doesn't auto-cancel when you delete the photos.

Common pitfalls

Library too large for one export request

Google's largest export size is 50 GB per file. Libraries above this get split into numbered parts automatically (takeout-001.zip, takeout-002.zip, etc.). Drop them all into the wizard at once and it handles the rest. There is no library size limit at the wizard's end.

Metadata in JSON sidecars instead of EXIF

Google Takeout often stores per-photo metadata in a separate JSON file next to the image instead of writing it back into EXIF. The wizard reads the JSON sidecars automatically and reattaches the metadata at import time, so you don't have to do anything — but if you've ever extracted a Takeout manually and wondered why dates were missing, this is why.

Live Photos and Motion Photos

Apple Live Photos and Google Pixel Motion Photos are split by Takeout into a JPEG plus a short MP4 with a matching filename. The wizard pairs them back up automatically and your library shows them as live previews on iOS and Android, just like in Google Photos.

Year-dated subfolder structure

Inside the Takeout zip, photos are organised into folders like Photos from 2024/, Photos from 2023/, and so on. This isn't a problem — the wizard ignores the folder structure and uses each photo's own metadata to organise them on the timeline.

"Shared with me" photos

Photos that other people shared with you in Google Photos are not automatically included in your Takeout. If you want them, you need to add them to your own library before requesting the export — or ask the original sharer to send them directly.

Frequently asked questions