Could someone explain in simpler terms than the Google searches how to download all my Google drive images to my hard drive without having them split into pdf and json files and without having to zip and unzip. Why can't they just be dragged like any other file transfers?
Downloading photos from Google drive
May 22, 2026
Last reply: 1 month ago
7 Replies
formatting link
Start by deselecting all, then add back the "Photos" and/or "Drive" files.
In my case, I can just select all the files I want then press the Download icon in the menu bar at the top.
I tried that but ended up with two versions of each file - one jpg and one json. I hava absolutely zero idea how to re-combine these files.
The .json files contain metadata, so either delete or ignore them, there may be ways to merge them back into the .jpg files as EXIF data.
But does this then mean the 'new' .jpg file contains less (meta)data than the original?
Yes, I they strip out at least the GPS co-ordinates to stop people (who don't know that's in there to begin with) leaking their location. It still contains lens/aperture/shutter info and timestamp stuff.
I suppose the .json file is no great loss then.
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