Per subject. Google really stepped in it this time, and before biting the nail and going ahead to install Immich and migrate everything to it, I would like to know if there's any workaround so rclone can be back to seeing all photos.
Perhaps extending gphotosdl and rclone --gphotos-proxy functionality to use the headless browser to not only download, but also at least list, perhaps also mkdir, etc? Is this too pie-in-the-sky?
TIA!
Hi,
With respect to Google Photos it is now what Rclone labels as tier 5. Tier 5 means that it has been deprecated and it is no longer maintained or supported.
Google has changed policies with regard to what Rclone can do with Google Photos. It can now only work with photos that it uploads and downloads.
I just mounted my Google Photos with Rclone and I can't see any of the photos.
MORE: No app Rclone or any other is going to work anymore.
Unfortunately, not in the way you're looking for anymore. What you saw with rclone—Google Photos mounts successfully, but most of your existing photos are missing—is expected behavior, not a configuration problem.
Google changed the Google Photos APIs effective March 31, 2025. The Library API now permits an application to list/read only photos and albums created by that application. Google removed the scopes that previously allowed an application to enumerate your entire existing library. Google for Developers
Rclone explicitly documents the consequence:
“From March 31, 2025 rclone can only download photos it uploaded.” Rclone
So changing your client ID, OAuth scopes, or rclone configuration will not make the missing existing photos appear.
This is the important part: switching from rclone to another Google Photos filesystem/mounting application won't solve it.
The restriction is imposed by Google's API, not rclone. A normal third-party program cannot ask Google Photos, “give me a directory listing containing every photo in this account” anymore. Google for Developers
Google's replacement for accessing existing photos is the Google Photos Picker API. It can access photos already in your library, but it requires you to select the photos/videos you want to give the application access to. It isn't an unrestricted filesystem interface that a program can use to mount your complete Photos collection automatically. Google for Developers
That means something such as:
G:\
Google Photos\
2024\
2025\
2026\
with all your existing Google Photos dynamically visible as files isn't something a legitimate third-party mounting application can currently implement through Google's supported APIs.
If your objective is “I want my entire Google Photos collection accessible as ordinary files on Windows/Linux”, I'd approach it differently:
Google Photos → Google Takeout → local/cloud storage → rclone mount
For example:
Google Photos
↓
Google Takeout
↓
Google Drive / OneDrive / local storage
↓
rclone mount
↓
G:\Photos
Once the actual JPG/HEIC/MP4 files reside in Drive or another normal storage service, rclone can mount them normally. Google Drive itself is a Tier 1 rclone backend, unlike the Tier 5 Google Photos backend.
There are also programs that periodically download/export Google Photos using approaches other than the normal Library API, but I'd be cautious about recommending one without checking how it currently obtains access.
If you'd like, I can search specifically for current Windows/Linux programs in 2026 that can automatically download your entire existing Google Photos library, including solutions using Google Takeout automation or the Picker API. That may give you a much better replacement for the old rclone Google Photos functionality.
I did do a proof of concept for gphotosdl for thus but I ended up taking the rclone part away as the API doesn't show the IDs. At that point it became a clone of other open source tools like GitHub - perkeep/gphotos-cdp: This program uses the Chrome DevTools Protocol to drive a Chrome session that downloads your photos stored in Google Photos. · GitHub with no rclone involved.
Maybe I should do a little more to it so that it pretends to be the Google API so rclone could use it.
Dunno. Pretty disheartened with Google and their gphotos API and the way they have neutered it. Also getting rclone approved was really hard work.
Hmm,
I have an app called raidrive and it can mount your Google Photos drive and it only sees some photos that are really old for me, but none of my new photos. It doesn't work either.
What about trying to adapt Rclone to use this Google Photos Picker API?