You Can Now Transfer All Your Photos, Videos From Facebook to Google Photos

Dec. 3, 2019

Facebook on Tuesday released a new in-app feature that it says will allow users totransfer their photos and videos directly to other social media platformsor media hosting services, including Google Photos. The new tool is part of the company’s so-calledData Transfer Projectthat wasoriginally announced last yearas a collaboration between Facebook, Apple,Google, Microsoft and Twitter to enable users easily transfer their data between various online services.

In an officialblog postannouncing the launch of the new feature, Facebook said that it has just started rolling out in Ireland, but is expected to be available globally next year.“The goal of this project has been to make it easier for services of any size to securely make direct transfers for data portability from one service to another and to make the process simpler for the people who use these services”, said the company.

To mitigate security risks, the transfer mechanism uses the OAuth protocol to authenticate people with the destination service. The company also said that users will need to re-enter their password to initiate a transfer, so that unauthorized folks won’t be able to download anything to their accounts.“We also send an email to the registered account once a transfer has begun, which allows people a chance to stop the transfer if they change their mind or do not recognize the request”, said the company.

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