Google Photos

Service discontinued

The Google Photos mount service was discontinued on March 31, 2025, following Google's release of the Photos Picker API and changes to the Library API — under the new API policy, mounting is no longer possible. See the official notice.

Mount your Google Photos library as a read-only Windows drive and browse photos and albums in Explorer.

Before you begin

Prepare the following in advance:

• A Google account.

Help from Google

• Google Photos Help
• Manage third-party access to your account

Connect

1. Click Add in the toolbar.
2. Choose Personal → Google Photos.
3. Set the drive letter and name, then click Connect.
4. Your browser opens — sign in to Google and click Allow.

Settings

Setting	Description	Default
Drive letter	Where the drive mounts in Windows	first available
Name	Label shown in Explorer	Google Photos
Read-only	Always on — Google Photos does not support writing	on (fixed)

Behavior & limits

• The drive is read-only; the option cannot be disabled because the Google Photos Library API only lets third-party apps upload and manage content the app itself created — existing library items cannot be modified or deleted through it.
• Photos are organized as the API exposes them (albums and dates), not as a free-form folder tree.
• Downloads may be re-encoded versions depending on your Google Photos storage settings, not always the original bytes.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Cannot save or delete files	Google Photos is read-only by design	Manage the library at photos.google.com
Some albums missing	Shared albums not joined by the account	Join the album in Google Photos, then reconnect