Upload Once, Blog Anywhere: Photos from Google

Wouldn’t it be great if you could browse, search, and insert photos from your Google account right to your blog posts and pages? Now you can.

September 26, 2017

John Godley

Google Photos is one of the most popular ways of storing and sharing photos online. WordPress.com is one of the most popular ways to blog. Wouldn’t it be great if they played well together — if you could use photos you’ve uploaded to Google on your site?

We thought so, too: starting today, you can browse, search, and copy photos from your Google account right from your blog posts and pages. Introducing: photos from Google!

To get started, open up your Media Library on WordPress.com and select the media source dropdown. Then choose the Photos from Your Google library option:

The first time you do this you’ll need to connect to your Google account by pressing the connect button.

Once you’re connected your WordPress.com Media Library will display your recent Google photos. Select the image you want to use, click the Insert button, and poof! The image will be copied to your Media Library and inserted into your post.

It doesn’t end there: since Google analyzes and automatically categorizes your photos, you can use their sorting to browse and search your photos whether or not you’ve added any tags or descriptions. (Thanks, Google!)

Have photos of cats you want to post? Search for “cats,” and Google picks out your cat photos. Want to create a gallery with photos of your trip to Japan? Search for “Kyoto” and you’re all set.

If you have a WordPress.com plan that offers video support, you can display videos from your Google account, too. And fear not, self-hosted WordPress users: you also can use this feature through the Jetpack plugin.

We’re working on integrating this deeper into your WordPress.com experience, and we hope to integrate more services with WordPress.com in the future. You can find more help at our Photos from Google support page, or by contacting us.

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55 Comments

Comments are closed.

  1. Fatima Sep 26th at 2:07 pm

    Thank you! 🙂 I can kiss you right now. Alright, air kiss you.

    Liked by 20 people

  2. underthescenes Sep 26th at 2:07 pm

    This comes at the right time. I was just going to limit my recent photos to my Instagram and Pinterest because of ease. I actually think Google’s is more user-friendly for what I generally want, so I’ll look into this.

    Thanks.

    Liked by 12 people

  3. grilledbrains Sep 26th at 2:16 pm

    Thank You.

    Liked by 6 people

  4. RosemaryMarie Sep 26th at 2:26 pm

    This is terrific! Thank you!

    Liked by 8 people

  5. PKreation Sep 26th at 2:27 pm

    Thank you, we actually need this.

    Liked by 6 people

  6. thatcoffeedrinkingmama Sep 26th at 2:58 pm

    This is so awesome! So glad this is a feature now!

    Liked by 6 people

  7. Cal Common Sep 26th at 3:08 pm

    Thanks much. Now to really make me happy; Microsoft One Drive…PLEASE!

    Liked by 11 people

  8. Crystaleyes20 Sep 26th at 3:39 pm

    I was hoping this would soon be an option! Thank you for sharing this information!

    Liked by 6 people

  9. Dan Sep 26th at 3:39 pm

    This is the best!

    Liked by 6 people

  10. Joseph Sep 26th at 3:43 pm

    Great news, thanks for supporting this feature into WordPress.

    Liked by 6 people

  11. Laurus Novum Sep 26th at 3:52 pm

    This doesn’t work for me. If I would like to insert a picture from Google Photos for an article, I need to copy that, and it will take place in the storage. So, isn’t it easier to simply upload a picture for my blog’s WordPress media library? It would be better that if I upload something from Google Photos, I can simply insert them in the article without copying that, and nothing will take place in the storage.

    Liked by 12 people

    • John Sep 26th at 4:37 pm

      There are many ways of achieving the same result. If your photos are already in Google Photos then this new feature will be the easiest and quickest way to use them on your blog, and you can do this while still editing your post. If you have experienced a problem then please contact us.

      Liked by 2 people

  12. desireedera Sep 26th at 4:03 pm

    So helpful👌

    Liked by 5 people

  13. TINA Sep 26th at 4:05 pm

    Awesome!!!

    Liked by 6 people

  14. Edward Brain Sep 26th at 4:05 pm

    This is a great idea – once you get it up and working. I just went to my Media Library – as per your instructions – and there is no option to connect my Google account! Why is this?

    Liked by 7 people

  15. enochered Sep 26th at 4:07 pm

    It seems like a good idea, however I am not too sure how I would use it as presumably I would be obliged to select from photos chosen by Google. I already have a stack of photos in my media library and googling does not take long. Does the new system involve waiting for many photos to download or do you go to google to choose?

    Liked by 6 people

  16. Anna Andrews-Mills Sep 26th at 4:40 pm

    Reblogged this on Anna.logy and commented:

    I use Google for tons of things, including images, and this just makes my life easier. Awesome.

    Liked by 6 people

  17. Ryan Ott (@rynobot) Sep 26th at 4:46 pm

    Will this feature be included in Jetpack any time in the future for those of us with self-hosted sites?

    Liked by 7 people

    • John Sep 26th at 4:54 pm

      Yep it’s already available for Jetpack sites! Just pick your Jetpack-powered site from WordPress.com and you’ll have the same Google option in the Media Library.

      Liked by 4 people

  18. Wilson Wong U S Sep 26th at 4:59 pm

    Went to the Dashboard, went to the library, couldn’t find the Google Photo link. Odd.

    Liked by 6 people

  19. Labi Francis Sep 26th at 5:16 pm

    This is awesome. Thanks

    Liked by 5 people

  20. Catherine Sep 26th at 5:17 pm

    Oh. This is good!! I usually google my own blog’s images and copy but this is better. Thank you!

    Liked by 6 people

  21. kelsblisslist Sep 26th at 5:26 pm

    Will photos from Google still count towards storage space?

    Liked by 8 people

  22. David McCaslin Sep 26th at 5:41 pm

    This doesn’t seem to work with WP iPad app… I can’t even add new photos to media unless I take a screenshot for it then appear in screenshot pics…very frustrated

    Liked by 8 people

  23. Franc Woods Sep 26th at 6:39 pm

    I’m using self-hosted WordPress version 4.8.2 and don’t see this option in the upper left of the Media Library. Is there a particular plugin that needs to be enabled?

    Liked by 7 people

  24. Denzil Sep 26th at 6:40 pm

    Sounds excellent, even though I don’t use Google Photos, and never knew it existed, but now is the time to discover all about it and start using it!

    Liked by 6 people

  25. Go Map Girl Sep 26th at 6:48 pm

    This is going to make posting images so much quicker and easier, thank you WordPress and Google Photos!

    Liked by 6 people

  26. A Wanderer Sep 26th at 7:13 pm

    This is so cool.Thank you😊

    Liked by 7 people

  27. OmoAckin Sep 26th at 7:35 pm

    Awesome! Thumbs up to the WordPress.com team…..

    Liked by 5 people

  28. Che Sep 26th at 8:38 pm

    This is great! For blogging, I’m using a computer that doesn’t have my photos in it (yet) so I have to open Google on another window to access my photos and save it on my media files. I’ so excited 🙂

    Liked by 6 people

  29. Glory Yours Sep 26th at 8:43 pm

    This is amazing. Much easier and quicker to find images. Thank You WordPress.com 🙂

    Liked by 5 people

  30. Remnants of Wit Sep 26th at 9:45 pm

    I’ve been wanting this forever! Thanks WordPress!

    Liked by 4 people

  31. southsiderunner Sep 26th at 11:08 pm

    Thanks for working on this!

    Liked by 4 people

  32. Bekah Sep 26th at 11:32 pm

    Yay! This is fabulous!

    Liked by 5 people

  33. Rocco B Sep 27th at 3:47 am

    Pretty neat feature!. Just curious, will this feature also be available to those that use flickr in the future?.

    Liked by 5 people

  34. Dave Roberts Sep 27th at 7:34 am

    Excellent feature, but will it be available directly from self hosted sites without using WordPress.com? This cuts out so many steps in our publishing workflow, but then adds several more if we then need to login to WordPress to do this. Our admin setup is complex, so switching to editing here isn’t an option.

    I’ve multiple contributors who write directly and this would be a game changer if they could directly upload their images from their account.

    Liked by 5 people

  35. thehotskillscom Sep 27th at 10:06 am

    Great feature!
    This makes blogging easy for everyone. I love to use WordPress.

    Liked by 3 people

  36. David Bennett Sep 27th at 10:42 am

    This sounds useful. I have a lot of photos that I put on Google over the years. And I could go in and download the ones I am interested in, but this seems like an easy way to connect. That said, and call me cautious, but when a user connects to their Google account, what is Google then enabled to see of what’s on the WordPress account and what is WordPress enabled to see of what’s in the user’s Google account?

    Liked by 4 people

    • John Sep 27th at 11:45 am

      The connection is one-way – Google has no path back to WordPress. When you connect to Google it lists the exact permissions being requested and you need to confirm these, which in this instance is specifically just access to your Google Photos. You can see this on the support page. You can disconnect at any point from WordPress.com or Google and any access is instantly revoked.

      Liked by 2 people

  37. MunkiKidz Photography Sep 27th at 3:54 pm

    I’m doing a happy dance right now! Thank you!

    Liked by 4 people

  38. gregorferencak Sep 27th at 4:33 pm

    This is cool. As first i didn’t find this feature, then i logged in to WordPress (was previously logged to my hosted WordPress ). I see now is only for accounts hosted directly here. Is there a way to use this on to say hosted Word-press installation? thanks

    Liked by 4 people

    • John Sep 27th at 5:44 pm

      Yes, as mentioned above you will need Jetpack. Once everything is installed and working you will be able to edit your self-hosted WordPress from WordPress.com and have access to your Google photos.

      Liked by 1 person

  39. aelkins1 Sep 28th at 8:32 pm

    Awesome new feature! One wrinkle: My photos on Google are all at native high-res. I typically re-scale my photos before posting to speed up load times and take less bandwidth, as a lot of my readers on on mobile. Is there any future plan to include a simple photo editor to resize or crop photos before posting from Google photos?

    Liked by 5 people

  40. Mabelle Theresa Sep 30th at 5:50 am

    thank you for this john! 🙂

    Liked by 5 people

  41. Emmy Oct 1st at 9:53 am

    Eek that’s exciting to know, that is for sharing x

    Liked by 5 people

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