TLDR; Google Photos Library API is intentionally limited. Most tutorials will show how you can access your entire data. They are outdated. This is the state in Feb 2026.
I am a Google one customer. Most people know that this means I rent a finite amount of cloud storage. My Google Photos takes a significant amount of storage space. Now that storage is becoming full.
So naturally I wanted to off-load. It is somewhat possible through their website app; but that can be cumbersome. Google Photos Library API showed some promise. I believed that I could access data on Google programmatically. I had experiencd with Google Apps Scripts before, and, believed this was possible.
Being the relatively lonesome developer that I am...I thought I could quickly hack some python program to help me out with this task.
The choice of "python" is inconsequential. Most google searches related to this topic will result in some pythonic script which understands how to talk to the library api. But make note, that I have never tried this before, and, I have heard or had a faint memory that google allows you to programmatically access your data stored on its various services.
Therefore I thought this farce objective of mine was achievable. And I set about a journey to learn how to work the python code and learn from video tutorials and blogs on the subject.
This is where you walk into a realm of oauth authentication. If you aren't a developer you can skip over this paragraph. And I am not going to go into this topic deeply either. There is a technical term associated with it called permission scopes (aka permissions) which controls your access to your "resource". Most tutorials say that "you have to this specific scope" and you magically can access your "resource".
Lo and behold...when I tried the tutorial examples myself, I was unable to access my data on Google photos. I initially got "request forbidden" or that I am "unauthorised". I understood that this meant I misconfigured some permission. I later fixed it. (After referring to documentation). And on the next trial, the script executed without errors and said that I had no albums!!?
That is when I took a closer read of the documentation. There was a link to an update. That further confirmed more disappointment. They have sunset the ability to entirely access since March 2025. I am trying to learn all this, with the mislead hope, in Feb 2026! And now I wonder why the tutorials weren't updated! 😖
So the state of affairs now is that you can script and upload data, and, download/access that data you have uploaded via that script. This hardly solves my requirement. There was probably a time developers had access to entire data. But Google has now intentionally limited this. I am frustrated at this pattern of capitalism that I decline to comment further on this.
I could have used AI to help. But honestly it was too early for that. I was simply on a exploration spree and I hit mildly sad news. However all internet searches prior to being "saddened" said that my goal was achievable.
For those who have reached this paragraph, Google Takeout is the only option for a complete backup. I hear that it thorns and caveats. I shall leave it for the world to rant on that subject.
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