Google’s Backup and Sync desktop app is now available for download for Mac and Windows after a delay last month.Users now have the power to sync up anything, including photos and videos from. If you have photos or videos in a Picasa Web Album, the easiest way to still access, modify and share most of that content is to log in to Google Photos. Your photos and videos will already be there. Go to Google Photos.

After a, Google’s desktop app for Mac is now available for download. With this revamped client, only one application is needed to back up files on a desktop to Google Photos and Drive. Similar to the previous Google Photos uploader, photos and videos from connected cameras and SD cards can automatically be backed up, while Drive is a more comprehensive backup solution for all local files. Aimed at regular consumers, the interface is straightforward and allows for users to continuously backup whole directories and folders to the cloud. In the toolbar, a small pane allows users to monitor the progress of uploads. For those updating, previous settings from Google Drive for Mac will be respected. Backup and Sync is not intended for G Suite customers and will not work with those accounts.

The enterprise-focused Drive File Stream is still in testing and will be available later this year for all G Suite Basic, Business, Enterprise, Education, and Nonprofit domains. On Mac, Backup and Sync requires version 10.9 Mavericks+ and can be downloaded from either.

I’ve always been a huge fan of cloud-managed photo systems. I did a review of back in 2013. I even Apple to release something similar to iCloud Photo Library. I’ve written countless articles about Photo Management and discussed it on countless podcasts. Photo management is something I care deeply about.

While I have all my photos and videos in iCloud Photo Library (the 2TB plan), I also still use Google Photos as well. You might wonder why? Youtube converter for mac. While I’m firmly entrenched in the Apple ecosystem from a hardware and software perspective, I always like to be flexible.

By keeping a dual copy of my photos in both system, I can easily swap to a Chromebook or Android device without missing a beat. Anytime I make an album in iCloud Photo Library; I always create the same album in Google Photos. Doing this allows me to stay up to date on the strengths and weaknesses of both.

ICloud Photo Library Strengths If you are using a macOS and iOS device, iCloud Photo Library has a very distinct advantage: it’s a native service. Your camera roll is hooked right into iCloud Photo Library.

If you go to post a photo to an app like Instagram, all of your photos are there. If you want to use a third party editing tool, you can give it access to your entire library. Any edits you make are automatically synced everywhere. Photos on the Mac is light years ahead of Google’s web interface for managing photos on the desktop. I can make custom albums based on EXIF data and easily export photos out (drag and drop) if I needed to.

Since my Mac has a 1 TB drive, I also keep an offline copy of my library. Doing this allows Time Machine and to keep additional backups for me. Despite the advancements in web technology, I still prefer native apps for photo management. Apple also has the advantage when it comes to privacy.

Apple doesn’t sync all of the faces metadata across iCloud. While the names of the people you have stored in Faces for are synced, each device does its face scanning on the device. While this makes a new device a little harder to setup, there is an aspect of Apple’s approach I appreciate. Weaknesses Apple has two key weaknesses with iCloud Photo Library.

The first is pricing. Apple only offers 5 GB for free of storage, so most people will have to pay to store their photos.

I understand that Google can offer a free plan due to advertising revenue, but if Apple is as concerned with privacy as they claim, they should offer at least 50 GB of free storage, so users don’t use Google Photos. The second key weakness is the lack of a family setup for iCloud Photo Library.

I know they offered shared albums, but families don’t have a way to share a single library. As a parent of young children, I have tons of photos. Some of them are taken by me and others taken by my wife. The fact that there isn’t an automatic way to share them back and forth creates difficult workflows. You can AirDrop them back and forth, but that gets old after a while.

My current solution is that I have my wife’s camera roll set to upload to Dropbox whenever she gets on Wi-Fi, and then I import them into Photos on the Mac (after I cull bad ones). They then sync to my iPhone, and then Google Photos uploads them. Here is how I think Apple could make it work: Let me designate read and copy of my camera roll to my family. Users could save anything from a family member’s library to their own. People could still create their own albums, but they could also view the libraries of family members (albums, faces, etc).