Google Photos Takeout Helper: Download & How to Use (2026)

Checked on 26 September 2026.

Google Photos Takeout Helper (GPTH) is a free, open-source tool that turns a Google Takeout export into one normal photo folder. Takeout gives you zips full of small folders and a .json file next to every photo. GPTH reads those .json files, puts the right date back on each photo and video, removes the duplicates Takeout creates for albums, and moves everything into one place, in date order.

There are two versions now, and the famous one is the old one. Here’s which to download, how to run it on each system, and what the errors mean.

Google Photos Takeout Helper download: GitHub, original or Neo

	GooglePhotosTakeoutHelper (original)	GPTH Neo
latest release	v3.4.3, September 2023	v6.4.0, 23 September 2026
still updated	no, last commit January 2025	yes
non-English exports	no, it looks for English folder names	yes
a single album	no, it needs the “Photos from …” year folders	yes
reads the zips directly	no, you unzip and merge first	yes
Mac on Apple Silicon	Intel build, needs Rosetta	native arm64 build
licence	Apache-2.0	Apache-2.0

Download GPTH Neo from its releases page. The original still works on a clean English export, but nobody fixes it when Google changes something. Neo is a fork of it, credited in its README.

Avoid pip install google-photos-takeout-helper: the PyPI package is the old Python version, stuck at 2.3.0 from August 2022.

How to use Google Photos Takeout Helper, step by step

1. Export your photos with Google Takeout

Open Takeout with only Google Photos selected, choose .zip, pick an archive size, and create the export. Neo’s README recommends 50 GB archives, because videos bigger than 2 GB get split in a way it can’t read. Google emails you when the export is ready. For a big library that can take hours or days.

Select all of Google Photos, not a single album, if you’re using the original. It needs the “Photos from 2019”, “Photos from 2020” folders to work.

2. Download every archive

All of them. A large library can be dozens or hundreds of files. Don’t start until the last one is on your disk and opens.

3. Unzip and merge (original only)

Neo can read the zips for you: pick “Select ZIP files from Google Takeout” when it asks.

With the original you have to do it by hand, and this is where most people get stuck. Every zip unpacks to its own takeout-20240610T183930Z-001/Takeout/ folder. Move the contents of every one of those inner Takeout folders into a single folder called Takeout, so that you end up with:

Takeout/
  Google Photos/
    Photos from 2019/
    Photos from 2020/
    My album/
    ...

Keep the zips. Both versions move files by default, so if something goes wrong halfway the zips are your only copy.

4. Run it

Google Photos Takeout Helper on Windows

Double-click the .exe. Windows Defender will warn you because it’s not signed: allow it. Answer the questions: input folder, output folder, how to handle albums.

Google Photos Takeout Helper on Mac

With Neo, download the macos-arm64 file on Apple Silicon or macos-x64 on Intel. Then, in Terminal:

cd ~/Downloads
chmod +x gpth_neo-6.4.0-release-macos-arm64.bin
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine gpth_neo-6.4.0-release-macos-arm64.bin
./gpth_neo-6.4.0-release-macos-arm64.bin

The xattr line stops Gatekeeper from blocking an unsigned download. With the original on Apple Silicon you also need Rosetta first: softwareupdate --install-rosetta.

Linux and Synology

Same as Mac: chmod +x and run. Neo has x64 and arm64 builds.

For Neo, install ExifTool first (brew install exiftool, winget install OliverBetz.ExifTool, or sudo apt install libimage-exiftool-perl). Without it, dates and places are written only into JPEGs.

5. Check the output

At the end it prints how many files it couldn’t date. Open the output folder, look at a few years you know well, and only then delete anything.

Errors and fixes

“I couldn’t find any D:” and code 13

Same problem, two messages: the tool found no photos in the folder you gave it. quit(13) is the exit right after “I couldn’t find any D:”. From the GitHub issues, it’s almost always one of these:

• Each zip is still in its own folder. You pointed it at a folder that contains takeout-…-001/Takeout, takeout-…-002/Takeout and so on. Merge them into one Takeout folder (step 3).
• You exported one album only. The original needs the “Photos from …” year folders. Export all of Google Photos, or use Neo.
• Your export isn’t in English. The original looks for English folder names. Use Neo.

“Can’t get date” and the date-unknown folder

Photos whose date it couldn’t figure out go into a folder called date-unknown, and the final message says “Couldn’t find date for N photos/videos”. Usually the .json didn’t match the photo, often because of file names with parentheses like (1) or with an edit suffix like -modifié (GitHub issues #188 and #204). What’s left, you date by hand or leave there.

Google Photos Takeout Helper not working on Mac

Three usual causes: the file isn’t executable (chmod +x), Gatekeeper is blocking it (xattr -d com.apple.quarantine), or you’re running the original’s Intel build on Apple Silicon without Rosetta. Neo’s arm64 build avoids the last one.

If you’d rather click than type

• GoogleTakeoutFixer: a window instead of a terminal. Free, GPL-3.0, v1.4.0 from March 2026. It writes the metadata into the files, and deletes the .json files when it’s done.
• immich-go: if you’re moving to Immich, skip GPTH. It reads the Takeout zips directly and uploads with dates and albums. immich-go-gui puts a form in front of it.
• Metadata Fixer and Takeout Rescue are paid (Takeout Rescue: $9 for one job, $24 for a licence).

What GPTH doesn’t do

Every tool on this page starts once the zips are on your disk. Getting them there is the part nobody automates. When I did it, the export was 159 archives and 344 GB, for an account whose app said 12.5 GB, and it took three days of restarting downloads.

And none of them tells you whether everything arrived. Takeout hides one count, in archive_browser.html inside the last archive, but it counts files, not photos: the .json files and the album copies are in it too.

That gap is why I built Homewend. You sign in once and press one button: it asks Takeout for the export, downloads every archive with resume, checks every file against what Google exported, and leaves the photos in plain folders by year and month. It never edits a photo, so if you want the dates written inside the files, that’s still a job for GPTH or ExifTool. One gets the library onto your disk, the other fixes the files once they’re there.

FAQ

Is Google Photos Takeout Helper safe? Both versions are open source under Apache-2.0, and the code is on GitHub. Download only from the GitHub releases pages. The real risk is that it moves your files: keep the zips until you’ve checked the result.

Is it free? Yes, both versions.

Does it work with exports that aren’t in English? Neo does. The original expects English folder names.

Does it change my photos? It moves them and writes the date into the file (EXIF, through ExifTool in Neo). Keep the original zips if you want an untouched copy.

Can I pip install it? The PyPI package is the old Python version from 2022. Use the releases on GitHub.