Facebook Finally Brings Its Google Photos Transfer Tool To The US

Following its initial announcement of the offering late last year, Facebook has announced the North American release of its new tool that enables its users to transfer their uploaded images to Google Photos. The company initially made the tool available to a limited number of users in Ireland but announced on Thursday that it is once again expanding it to all of its users in the United States and Canada.

If you're a Facebook user, you've likely amassed a large number of videos and photos on the social media platform, particularly if your account is several years old. Moving these images off the platform and into a cloud storage solution is ideal if you want to make sure they won't end up deleted or lost, but migrating to a different service is time-consuming.

In its initial announcement about the tool in December 2019, Facebook said that its tool is based on its participation in the Data Transfer Project, promising worldwide availability by summer 2020. The next update came in late February when Facebook said that it was expanding the availability beyond Ireland into some countries in Asia Pacific and Latin America.

Following that, Facebook said on March 10 that it was once again expanding the availability into more countries, including ones in Africa and the European Union; it also launched in the UK. The latest update arrived this past Thursday when Facebook said that the tool is finally also available to users located in the US and Canada.

In order to use the tool, Facebook users need to head into Settings > "Your Facebook Information," then choose "Transfer a Copy of Your Photos or Videos." After entering your password when prompted, you'll need to choose Google Photos as the destination for the transfer, then confirm that you want the transfer to take place.