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Organizing, saving and enjoying digital photos has been close to my heart for almost a decade. My oldest son was born in 2010, so he was at the perfect age when iPhone cameras started improving at a dramatic rate year on year. iCloud Photos and Google Photos are the most common photo management solutions people use today. What’s the best way to manage photos on iPhone, iPad, and Mac? When you compare Google Photos and iCloud, which is the better solution?
Managing photos in the cloud has become something that only big tech companies can offer due to the ever increasing cost of storing files and increasing media quality. Over the years, many companies have come and gone and have left consumers with only a few photo management choices. This category really should have been dominated by Flickr, but they struggled to create a great mobile experience. Eventually, companies like Everpix came up with robust solutions, but they couldn’t stay in existence long enough to gain mass market share. Today we only have three companies left: Apple, Google and Amazon, but for most people that will be like choosing Apple or Google. Let’s take a look at the strengths and weaknesses of both to determine the best choice when considering Google Photos over iCloud Photos.
Apple iCloud photos
If you’re using a macOS and iOS device, iCloud Photos has a very distinct advantage – it’s a native service. Your Camera Roll is directly connected to iCloud Photos. If you post a photo to an app like Instagram, all of your photos are there. If you want to use a third-party editing tool, you can give it access to your entire library. Any changes you make are automatically synced everywhere.
iCloud Photos on Mac is light years ahead of Google’s web interface for managing photos on the desktop. I can create custom albums based on EXIF data and effortlessly export photos (drag and drop) as needed. Since my Mac has a 1TB drive, I also keep an offline copy of my library. This allows Time Machine and Backblaze to keep additional backups for me. Despite advancements in web technology, I still prefer native apps for managing photos.
However, you don’t have to have all that amount of storage on your device. One of the main advantages of iCloud Photos is that you can access your entire library from all your devices without having to download the entire database offline. You’ll be able to edit a photo on your iPad, then all the edits show up everywhere else.
In terms of price, Apple was at a disadvantage because Google offered a free version, but changes in 2021. Google is abandoning the free storage level of Google Photos. Although your existing imports will not count towards your free 15 GB quota, future imports will count after June 2021.
Apple only includes 5GB free, so if you have more than that, you’ll need to download. Apple’s price for iCloud storage:
- 5 GB: free
- , $ 99 / month: 50 GB
- $ 2.99 / month: 200 GB
- $ 9.99 / month: 2TB
ICloud storage is also included in Apple One bundles, including access to Apple Music, Apple TV +, Apple Arcade, Apple News, and more. Families who want to bundle their services could save money if they already plan to buy Apple TV + and Apple Music as the cost of iCloud storage drops even more. If you don’t want to buy Apple One, the only plans that can be shared with your family are the $ 2.99 / month and $ 9.99 / month plans.
The main weakness of iCloud Photos is the lack of a family setup. I know they offered shared albums, but families can’t afford to share a single library. As a parent of young children, I have tons of photos. Some of them are taken by me and others by my wife. The fact that there is no automatic way to share them back and forth creates complicated workflows. You can AirDrop them back and forth, but it gets old after a while. My iCloud Photo Library is our main one, so I set up my wife’s camera roll to upload through Dropbox, and then import them to my library.
Hopefully Apple will add a way for families to share their entire library with family members in the future. I want to designate the playback and copyright of my film to my family. Users can save anything from a family member’s library to their own. People could still create their albums, but they could also browse the libraries of family members (albums, faces, etc.). I could choose the best photos taken by my wife and save them to my library with this option.
Google Photos
Google Photos is Google’s cloud-based photo management solution, and there’s a lot to love about it. Still, the crucial question is, does it offer enough to be a better solution than Apple’s iCloud Photos? It provides a native app with great editing solutions on iPad and iPhone, but on the desktop, you’ll use the web interface to access your library. The lack of a desktop app is a critical downside for Google Photos.
For a long time, Google had a pricing advantage over Apple because it offered a free plan that covered the needs of most people. With that being phased out in 2021, now is the time to put them on a level playing field. Google Price:
- $ 1.99 / month for 100 GB
- $ 2.99 / month for 200 GB
- $ 9.99 / month for 2TB
As you can see, it’s very comparable to Apple’s prices, and Google offers family options as well. If you’re currently using Google Photos, but want to switch to iCloud, check out our handy guide on how to export from Google Photos.
Where Google completely surpasses, Apple is with Family Sharing. Google Photos includes an option to share your entire library with someone else. You can share your entire library, photos of only certain people, or photos from a specific date. This functionality is done from the Google account to the Google account. Even if you don’t want to go through this hassle, you can also sign in to your Google account on a spouse’s phone, and you can both download from one place.
Which solution is the best?
Both services offer fantastic experiences and have their pros and cons. Apple offers deep integration with iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Google offers strong family sharing options. Google’s automations are probably a step ahead of Apple’s when it comes to auto-making memory movies, etc. Apple offers better editing options because third-party apps can link directly to the library.
If you are heavily tied to the Apple ecosystem, it’s hard to narrow down all the benefits of iCloud Photos. I will recommend that you start there and switch to Google Photos if that doesn’t suit your needs. The ability to download your offline library for backup is essential for me, and I much prefer editing in a desktop app over a web app. Both solutions are fantastic and are a great place to complement your ever growing library of home photos and movies. The real winner when considering Google Photos vs iCloud is the consumer, as both options are great choices. It’s going to come down to personal preferences when you consider what each of them does well.
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