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It came to my attention today that Google Takeout isn’t that known by Google users yet. Time to change this since it’s one of the most important tools they offert their million users world wide. After reading this article you will know how to make a local backup off all your Google data.
What is Google Takeout?
Google Takeout is the overarching backup service where Google users can benefit from. The only reason this service exists is to offer you, as a Google user, the possibility to download all the data Google has saved about you. In case Google would ever stop their services, can we even imagine a day like that would even come, you will have everything stored on your pc.
Wich services are included in Google Takeout support?
All services from Google are included! From Gmail to Youtube, from Calendar to Favorites and even from Picasa and your location history. For most of the services you can choose in what filetype you would like to download the backup. You don’t have to download a full backup of all the services of course. It’s easy to enable or disable desired service to inclue or exclude them from the backup file.
How does Google Takeout work?
- You don’t need any technical knowledge to download your Google archive. I a few simple steps (and a few hours of patience) you can get it offline on your pc.
- Go to the takeout page in your Google account.
- In case you have multiple Google Accounts, choose the one you want to create the backup for.
- Choose the Google services you want to include in the archive.
- If desired adjust the output format for the different services (Not required, the defaults are already pretty good).
- Choose on the next page how you want to download the archive. The default is in .ZIP format, this is a good option to leave like this.
- You can choose to recieve a download link by email or let the backup be placed into your Google Drive account directly.
- Hit the button to create your archive. Please be aware, this might take from several hours to several days. This depends on you much data they have to combine.