Upload all copied media, including subdirectories, into a single Google Photos album?

[deckydew (Caoilainn)]

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

I’ve set up rclone to upload my “Pictures” and “Videos” folders to Google Photos, and it’s working great, however I’m not a fan of it creating a new album for each subdirectory, it makes my albums page super cluttered. I could use the backend “upload” directory, but I’d like to have a single album for all of my rclone uploads so I can easily access it from my phone without having to scroll back through everything on my camera roll.

Run the command 'rclone version' and share the full output of the command.

rclone v1.74.0-beta.9447.eef0b39a2
- os/version: debian 13.3 (64 bit)
- os/kernel: 6.12.63+deb13-amd64 (x86_64)
- os/type: linux
- os/arch: amd64
- go/version: go1.25.7
- go/linking: static
- go/tags: none

Which cloud storage system are you using?

Google Photos

The command you were trying to run

rclone copy /home/caoilainn/Pictures googlephotos:album/rclone
rclone copy /home/caoilainn/Videos googlephotos:album/rclone

Please run 'rclone config redacted' and share the full output. If you get command not found, please make sure to update rclone.

[googledrive]
type = drive
client_id = XXX
client_secret = XXX
scope = drive.file
token = XXX
team_drive = 

[googlephotos]
type = google photos
token = XXX
client_id = XXX
client_secret = XXX

[rclone-ui]

You should pass only the files to rclone, without traversing the folders.

Can be done both natively with rclone, or through your terminal

With rclone

rclone copy /home/caoilainn/Pictures googlephotos:album/rclone --include "/*.{jpg,png,mp4}"

With terminal

find /home/caoilainn/Pictures -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} rclone copy "{}" googlephotos:album/rclone