Facebook’s photo and video transfer tool, which was first released in Ireland, and upon a successful pilot was rolled out to several other regions including Africa, Asia, Latin America and EU, has now also launched in US and Canada.
The data transfer tool by Facebook is intended to help users transfer their photos and videos uploaded to the social network to other services, starting with Google Photos.
To access the photo transfer tool, users will need to head to Facebook Settings and look within Your Facebook Information — the same place you’d find the option to download your information.
The data transferred via the photo tool will be encrypted, and users will need to enter their password to begin the process, as Facebook’s announcement from December stated that they’ve “kept privacy and security as top priorities”.
The tool was expanded to several countries in Latin America and Asia Pacific on February 20, followed by another roll out in Europe, South East Asia and Africa on March 10, 2020.
This photo transfer tool by Facebook is based on a code that was developed through the company’s participation in the open-source Data Transfer Project, which was launched in 2018 and in addition to Facebook, includes companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft and Twitter.
Data Transfer Project aims to enable users to port their data from one online platform to the other. This is being done through collaboration among online organisations via an open-source framework, which can connect the two service providers using existing APIs and authorisation mechanisms.
Here is how you can transfer your Facebook photos and videos to Google Photos (and other services from Microsoft and Twitter, among others, in the future) in five steps.
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