How to Sync Pictures to Google Drive [5 Free and Easy Ways]

Wondering how to sync pictures to Google Drive? Several methods to transfer pictures to Google Drive from various devices and Google Photos are provided on this page.

By @Jonna Last Updated February 3, 2023

Why Sync Pictures to Google Drive?

Photos can help us capture the most important moments in our lives. However, if you store a large number of photos on your phone or computer, it is not only easy to lose but also takes up a lot of space and causes your device to run slowly. Therefore, to protect photos safely, syncing pictures to Google Drive is an effective backup strategy.

Compared to backing up photos to a physical storage device, saving pictures online to Google Drive has many advantages:

  • Free storage space and scalable storage: Google Drive gives 15GB of free storage and offers a variety of plans for you to increase Google Drive storage easily.
  • Easy data access: After storing photos on Google Drive, you can access your data with an Internet-connected device (phone, tablet, or computer) from anywhere.
  • High security: Storing pictures in the cloud can protect them from hard drive failure, virus attacks, and all kinds of accidents that would cause photo loss.

In the following, we shall address several methods on how to sync pictures to Google Drive from mobile phones, computers, and Google Photos.

Section 1. How to Sync Pictures to Google Drive from Phone

We shall now share the methods that can be used to back up pictures to Google Drive on phones. Choose the method that is appropriate for your case and back up all your pictures for protection.

Way 1. Sync iPhone Pictures to Google Drive

Step 1. Run the Google Drive application on your iOS device and log in.

Step 2. Click the Menu button (three vertically stacked rows) in the top left corner.

Step 3. Choose Settings and click Backup.

Step 4. Turn on Photos & videos backup, and tap on Start Backup.

Way 2. Sync Android Photos to Google Drive

Step 1. Open the Google Drive app, and go to Settings.

Step 2. Click Account and backup, locate Backup and restore, and then turn on Back up my data.

Step 3. Choose your Google Drive account, and enable Back up to Google Drive. Then, tap Back up now to begin Google Drive photos backup.

Section 2. How to Sync Pictures to Google Drive on Computer

The provided solutions in this part are applicable to sync photos to Google Drive on Windows and Mac PCs. You will learn how to auto sync photos to Google Drive using Drive for desktop and professional file sync freeware.

Way 1. Sync Pictures with Google Drive using desktop app

Google Drive offers a desktop application named Drive for desktop app that you can use to sync local folders to Google Drive photos, sync files between your computer and the cloud, and upload external hard drive to Google Drive.

Learn how to synchronize pictures to Google Drive with Drive for desktop:

Step 1. Download, launch, and log in to Google Drive for desktop.

Step 2. Click on Add folder on the My Computer interface to add the folder where your pictures are stored.

Notes:✎...
You can choose to upload photos of original quality or reduced quality in Settings.

Step 3. Tick Select with Google Drive on the pop-up screen > click Done.

Step 4. Click Save to begin backup photos to Google Drive.

Way 2. Sync Pictures to Google Drive with CBackup

In fact, since Google Drive replaced Google Backup and Sync with Drive for desktop, many people have reported that this new application is not quite useful. Here, we’d like to introduce you to another easy and free method to sync photos with Google Drive.

CBackup is a professional backup and sync tool that can help you upload pictures to Google Drive automatically. Its intuitive user interface makes it easy to operate even for novices. Here are some useful features of it. You can check it yourself.

? Offer flexible auto file synchronization like daily, weekly, and monthly, allowing you to perform scheduled sync easily. ? Support multiple cloud storage services, including Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and so on. ? In addition to pictures, it lets you sync entire hard drives, whole computers, files, folders, and all kinds of data without limitations. ? Provide Cloud to Cloud Sync that enables you to transfer data from one Google Drive to another freely and smoothly.

How to sync images to Google Drive with CBackup is guided below.

Notes:✎...
CBackup is a one-way sync tool that only syncs data from the source location to the destination location without syncing cloud data locally.

Step 1. Download and install the CBackup application on your computer. Apply an account for it for free and log in to the desktop client.

Download CBackupWin 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP
Secure Download

Step 2. Select Google Drive on the Storage screen, and click Authorize Now. Then, follow the on-screen instruction to warrant CBackup to access your cloud storage.

Step 3. Click Sync and then Sync PC to Public Cloud to create a new sync task.

Step 4. Choose pictures that you want to save online. Click the drop-down menu to open Google Drive and select a Google Drive folder as the sync destination.

Step 5. Tap on Start Sync to sync pictures to Google Drive. Then, you can view the task from the Task tab.

➯Before starting a sync task, you could click Settings and enable Scheduler to select one time only/daily/weekly/monthly to auto-sync photos.

Section 3. How to Sync Photos to Google Drive from Google Photos

If you have stored photos on Google Photos, and you are looking for a solution to sync pictures to Google Drive from Google Photos, you can ask MultCloud for help. It is capable of syncing data between more than 30 cloud drives with click simple clicks.

Here are simple steps to sync Google Photos to Google Drive:

Step 1. Sign up for MultCloud and log in.

Step 2. Click Add Cloud on the left panel, select Google Photos to add to MultCloud, then add Google Drive in the same way.

Step 3. Go to the Cloud Sync tab, select pictures in Google Photos as the source, and select Google Drive as the target folder.

Step 4. Click Sync Now to backup Google Photos with Google Drive simply.

Conclusion

On this page, we listed 5 methods to sync pictures to Google Drive. You can upload photos to Google Drive from your mobile phone. You could also sync pictures with Google Drive using a free file sync service CBackup to complete the task on your computer. You can even backup photos from Google Photos to Google Drive with the guide above hassle-free.