How to Download Images from Google Photos using Python and Photos Library API

Image by the author

Using the Google Photos REST API you can download, upload and modify images stored in Google Photos.

Just as a quick refresher, REST is an architectural style for application programming interfaces that allows interaction with RESTful web services. [Red20]

A GET request allows retrieving database entries, POST requests to create new entries, PUT requests to update an entry and DELETE requests to delete one.

The following steps describe how to set up a simple project that lets you use Python to download images from Google Photos:

1. Open a terminal window and navigate to your working directory

2. Create the subfolder structure or clone the repo

git clone git@github.com:polzerdo55862/google-photos-api.git

https://github.com/polzerdo55862/google-photos-api.git

The repo contains the following subfolders:

• credentials: folder to store the credentials you need to authenticate your “Python App” to the Google Photos Library
• media_items_list: each time the script is run, it saves a .csv file with all Google Photos media…