Add the new Google Photos Picker API to rclone

Feature
1

I got the below email from Google a few days ago which I think means some work on rclone needs to be done to start using the Google Photos Picker API. Deadline is 31 March 2025.

Without doing this, the existing google photos backend for rclone would stop working when Google implements the announced API changes.

Dear Developer,

You’re receiving this email because you’re using Google Photos APIs, and you may be affected by some upcoming changes.

What’s changing?

We’re making two changes to the Google Photos APIs that will take effect March 31, 2025:

  1. Removal of scopes: The Google Photos Library API readonly, sharing, and search scopes will be removed, with photo picking and search uses cases now supported by a new Google Photos Picker API.
  2. Updated policy: The Photos API will switch to a new Photos API User Data and Developer Policy.

What do you need to do?

  • If you use the Google Photos Library API readonly, sharing, or search scopes, review the documentation.
    • For photo picking and search use cases, use the new Google Photos Picker API to maintain functionality. The Google Photos Picker API is custom-built for photo picking and provides robust photo and video selection capabilities, including selecting individual items, selecting all items within albums, and searching the Google Photos library.
    • For sharing use cases, direct the user to share from within Google Photos.
  • Review and familiarize yourself with the new Photos API User Data and Developer Policy.

We’re here to help
We’re committed to supporting you throughout the process. If you have questions, reach out on the support page. If you need more dedicated support, join our partner program.

Thank you,
Google Photos APIs Team

1 Like
2

We are already testing better methods to use google photos - see my post Fix google photos

So I hope it will be the default method in the future

3

Thanks - yeah I saw that thread already - interesting development. I may consider using something like that for a specific need but I wouldn't want to adopt that as the new default.

Personally I would strongly prefer to continue to use the official APIs for a few reasons:

  • More stable, properly supported, changes are announced and can be prepared for (like this email)
  • Can be scaled through official quota management in Google Cloud console. This becomes crucial when I'm downloading Google Photos for multiple accounts - I don't want to hit quota or API limits and have no visibility into it. Using the official API gives me the ability to separate the accounts through different quotas/projects, monitor them (and even pay to have higher quotas in the future).
  • I actually want to retrieve the compressed photos/videos from Google Photos. I find the compressed quality is perfect for my use case so chuking in full-quality videos/photos into Google Photos and retrieving compressed versions through the API is exactly what I want - it helps me optimize for local disk storage.

I have a pretty large collection of photos/videos that is growing at a very stable ~1 to 2 GB per day rate (compressed versions!). I'm expecting this level of growth to increase even so thinking of this on the ~20 year horizon, I want to keep treating Google Photos via rclone as "set and forget" (which is what I've been doing for the past ~3 years since I set this up).

4

I'm just thankful of the amazing work of ncw as always, I lost a google account before and lost years of photos and I just want to get out of that blackhole

I think google is pretty clear that they don't want anything really useful being built in their api as they don't have any way to delete photos, download at full resolution, etc so I understand your use case and i think you'll be fine

5

Yeah I agree - ncw has done an amazing job with rclone!

I've been reading through API changes and here is my interpretation of what's to come:

  • The Photos Picker API needs to be used to pick photos that rclone would have access to.
  • The current Photo Library API would change so it only have access to photos and albums that are created by rclone
  • It's unclear if a user is able to pick "the entire library" through the Photos Picker API since it seems like picking is done manually by the user through the Google Photos app or via a URL
  • This means downloading all albums and shared albums (that's currently possible) won't be possible once the new API changes are fully rolled out and previous API is disabled :frowning: - I can only download albums uploaded through rclone =.="

This is pretty dishearting as I want to be able to download all my albums and shared albums through rclone as well.

6

There was already a bug on this and I left a comment there to encourage the Google Photos team to reconsider the downgrade in functionality: Google Issue Tracker

7

I found a few other people also complaining about this change - thought I'd put it here before I forget:

8

Wow it appears its only getting worse, glad I'm taking my photos out while I can....

And I pay for google photos storage and not being able to take my photos at full resolution and metadata without bullshit should be illegal

I think now more than ever, rclone needs to step up the game making sure peoples life are not in the hands of google

9

I read this email and ignored it because rclone doesn't use the library API, but apparently they have renamed it and that is what we use.

Library API: Affected scopes and methods
As part of our changes to the Google Photos APIs, we have made the following updates.

As shown on the updated Authorization page, the following scopes will be removed from the Library API after March 31, 2025:

  • photoslibrary.readonly
  • photoslibrary.sharing
  • photoslibrary

Rclone uses the first or last scope.

We can probably make uploading work ok, but I think the photo picker API is probably a non starter for rclone.

FWIW the rclone gphotos integration is verified (or was anyway)