Saturday, December 14, 2024

Google Photos Takeout failure

Two months ago I exported all photos from Google Photos to import into immich, and scheduled followon Takeout runs every two months. I had naively assumed the subsequent exports would be incremental changes from the first one, but they are instead complete exports again. Oh well.

More significantly though, they seem to require re-entering my login every 20 minutes or so. When I click on a download link if I haven't logged in within the last few minutes I am asked to login again, but also downloads which do not complete within 20 minutes seem to stop. Clicking "resume" in the Chrome download window doesn't succeed.


 

Once this has happened enough times, Takeout disallows trying to download again.


 

ZIP archives #7 and #8 are now inaccessible to me.

I don't recall needing to login so often during the last export, two months ago. Though the downloads did sometimes fail, I also don't recall having the resume download fail because of the need to login again. It probably did not change in the intervening two months, but somehow I'm running into it this time.

Google Takeout really is a wonderful thing, but I'm going to have to do it again and — I guess — be especially careful about when to download the links. Do I have to be ready to click Resume immediately? That seems primitive.