If you ever have to do something like this again, rclone supports mounting Google Drive, at which point you'll be able to work with it as if it's a proper filesystem.

https://rclone.org/drive/

[–] tynansdtm@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, despite sharing the same pool of storage, Google Drive and Google Photos are different cloud services and you can't see photos from one on the other. And rclone's access to Photos is completely hamstrung. (Looks like I referred to it by both names in my last post, sorry for the confusion.)

[–] TwilightKiddy@scribe.disroot.org 2 points 1 week ago

God I'm glad I'm not using anything Google...

[–] Cyber@feddit.uk 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Wow, I didn't know that.

I can see I'm going to have to do something similar in the future, so my future self thanks you

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

photos on google photos might only be accessible with the appropriate rclone backend: https://rclone.org/googlephotos/

it has a few limitations, like google stores metadata (exif data) separately, so downloaded photos don't have them, there is another tool that puzzles it together automatically.
but now that I read it, for more than a year now rclone is only allowed to download what it uploaded? what bullshit is that, google?