check for the existence of files marked as already downloaded and re-download any missing ones.

optionally re-scan the entire library, ignoring the last scan date ( -rescan).

delete the index database and re-scan everything ( -flush-index).

The comparison does not require that the files are arranged in the same folders, it uses meta-data in the files such as create date and exif UID to match pairs of items (use -compare-folder 'COMPARE_FOLDER') See this link for more information

compare the images in your Google Photos account with a local folder, like a previous backup.

optionally only download and synchronize a single album (using -album 'ALBUM NAME').

grab all new photos added to your Google Photos account since the previous sync.

download all your images and videos from Google Photos, including those created automatically by Google Photos (animations, panoramas, movies, enhanced photos, or collages).

The gphotos-sync page includes an work-around for this issue, explained here, which I did not try. It's also worth noting that the Google Photos Library API strips GPS data from the images EXIF information (there's an open issue for this). It will not update any photos modified in Google Photos though, because there's no way to find out the modification date of images from Google Photos. Subsequent runs of gphotos-sync with the same root folder will refresh the local copy with any new photos added to your Google Photos since the last scan. Since this folder contains the same photos as those in photos/, the images in albums/ are symbolic links to the photos from photos/

albums, which contains a folder hierarchy representing the set of albums and shared albums in your library ( albums/YYYY/MM Original Album Name).

photos, which contains all Google Photos and videos organized in a year/month subfolder structure ( photo/YYYY/MM).

The first full sync creates 2 directories: It cannot upload photos to Google Photos. This application is only for Google Photos download / backup purposes. Gphotos-sync can backup all the photos an user has uploaded to Google Photos, as well as additional photos created automatically using Google Photos, like animations, panoramas, movies, enhanced photos, or collages. This tool is specially useful after Google's announcement that Google Photos will stop syncing to Drive starting July 10, 2019, which means that some tools for backing up Google Photos to your computer will stop working ( affecting Insync for instance, a commercial Google Drive client that runs on Linux, macOS and Windows). Use it periodically to grab all newly added photos, keeping a complete Google Photos backup on a server or desktop.

Gphotos-sync is a command line tool for backing up Google Photos (including separate albums) using the Google Photos Library API, for Linux, macOS and Windows.

Google sync and backup linux