Google Takeout

Google Takeout step by step: download a copy of your Google data

Takeout is Google's official tool for downloading your own data. This guide walks through every screen, explains the limits, and shows how to check what you received.

Updated 5 October 2026 · 5 min read

Google Takeout, at takeout.google.com, lets you download a copy of the data in your Google account: mail, Drive files, photos, calendars, contacts and more. It is useful in three situations: you want a backup you control, your storage is full and you want to move older material elsewhere, or you are leaving a service. Takeout copies; it does not delete anything from your account.

Before you start

• Space on your computer. The archive is roughly as big as the data you select. Check how much your account uses first (one.google.com → “Storage”) and make sure the disk you download to has room for it, ideally twice that, so you can unpack the files.
• Don't send it back to Drive if your storage is full. One delivery option is “Add to Drive”, and Google warns: “Your data will count toward your storage.” If you are exporting because you are out of space, choose the email link instead.
• Exporting everything is not mandatory. One archive per service (Photos, then Mail, then Drive) is easier to download and check than one huge export.

Creating the export, screen by screen

Google's help page divides the process into three steps: select data, customise the archive format, get the archive.

1. Sign in and go to takeout.google.com.
2. Products that contain data are automatically selected. Untick what you don't want. For some products you can also exclude certain types of data.
3. Click “Next step”.
4. Choose the delivery method: “Send download link via email”, “Add to Drive”, “Add to Dropbox”, “Add to OneDrive” or “Add to Box”. With the last three, once the archive is uploaded, the other service is responsible for it, and you receive a link by email.
5. Choose the frequency. A “One-time archive” is what most people need. “Scheduled exports” creates an archive of the selected data “every 2 months for one year” (not available with Google's Advanced Protection Program). The wording on the Takeout screen may differ slightly from the help page.
6. Choose the file type: .zip “can be opened on almost any computer”; .tgz may need extra software on Windows. If in doubt, choose .zip.
7. Choose the maximum archive size. If your data is bigger, Takeout creates several archives. Google notes that the 50 GB option reduces the chance of a split.
8. Click “Create export”.

How long it takes, and the limits

According to Google, the process “could take from a few minutes to a few days”, depending on how much data you have. You get an email when the archive is ready. A few rules to keep in mind:

• The link expires. “Your archive expires in about 7 days.” Download it as soon as you can.
• Five downloads per archive. “We only allow each archive to be downloaded 5 times; after that, please request another archive.” A connection that drops halfway through a large file uses up attempts, so a stable network helps.
• Advanced Protection delays it. With the Advanced Protection Program, the archive is scheduled for two days in the future.
• Deleted data is not included. Items still being deleted don't appear in the archive, and Google says that once data has been removed from its systems, “it is unlikely to be recoverable.”

What you get

You receive one or more .zip (or .tgz) files. If your data is larger than the size you picked, there will be several, and each one is a separate download with its own limit of five.

Photos deserve a closer look. Google explains that “any additional metadata that isn't from the original file, like comments within Google Photos, are downloaded to a secondary JSON file.” So next to your images you will find .json files. Do not delete them without thinking: they hold what you added in Google Photos, which is not inside the image.

A second detail confuses many people: once downloaded, your computer may show every photo with today's date. Google's explanation: “your operating system can assign a new timestamp to the file itself. The photo or video metadata still has the original timestamp preserved in the metadata embedded within the files.” Photo apps that read the embedded date will usually sort them correctly; the file manager's “date modified” column will not.

Unpack and check the archive

An export you never opened is not a backup. Before deleting anything from Google:

1. Download every part into one folder, and make sure none is missing before the link expires.
2. Extract each archive. If one fails to open, download that part again (you have up to five attempts).
3. Open a sample from different years: a few photos, a video, a PDF, a spreadsheet.
4. Compare rough totals with what one.google.com showed for each service. A big gap means something is missing.
5. Keep the original archives until the extracted copy is safely stored in at least two places.

Moving photos specifically has its own pitfalls, such as albums and what the direct transfer leaves out: see how to move Google Photos to another service. If what you want is to bring Drive files into another cloud, read importing from Google Drive and OneDrive.

Where to keep the export

A single external drive is a start, but it can fail or get lost. The usual advice is three copies, on two different kinds of storage, with one in another place: the 3-2-1 backup rule explains it without jargon.

LifetimeCloud can be the off-site copy. There is no direct import from Google: you download the archive, unpack it on your computer and upload the folders. From a computer, use “Upload folder” or drag the folders into the window; folder upload is not available from a phone browser. The content of your files is encrypted on your device before it leaves.