Your photos should be yours to take at any time, so downloading works on every plan and has no limits attached to it.
One photo#
Download any photo you can see. What you get depends on what was stored:
- On plans that keep print-ready originals — the original file your camera made, for photos you own.
- Otherwise — the browsable copy, up to 1920 pixels on the long edge. That's what was stored, so it's what there is to give you.
- A TIFF or BMP, on any plan — the file you uploaded. Those two are converted after they arrive rather than on your phone, so the file you picked is kept whatever plan you're on.
Videos download at the quality they were stored, 720p.
A whole album#
In the album's menu, Download Album saves every photo to your device, one file each. On a phone it keeps going while you carry on using the app.
From a Family Hub's dashboard or a share link, the album comes as a single zip file instead. Large ones are put together on our side first, so there's a short wait before the download starts.
Captions come with the photos#
Every album download also saves a captions file (captions.xlsx), a spreadsheet that opens in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets. It has one row for each photo that has something written about it: the file name, the date, its memory note, and the captions of the posts it appeared in. It's there for when you're putting together a printed album and want the words beside the pictures.
- It only has captions you can already see: a post in a circle you're not in, or one you hid, stays out. From a share link it has the memory notes only, as that page shows them.
- If no photo in the album has a note or a caption, there's no file.
- On an iPhone, the photos go to Photos and the captions file opens the share sheet, so you can save it to Files. Match the rows by date there, since Photos doesn't keep file names.
This is the right tool for "I want a copy of the holiday" or "I'm about to leave a hub and want the shared albums".
Downloading changes nothing#
It doesn't remove the photo, doesn't change who can see it and doesn't notify anyone. You're taking a copy, and the original arrangement carries on exactly as before.
That's worth knowing in two situations:
- Before leaving a hub, download what you want — it doesn't affect what stays behind for everyone else. See Leaving or being removed from a hub.
- Before giving photos away, download your own copy first. See Give your photos to someone.
When someone else controls it#
Downloading your own photos is always available, including ones you added to someone else's album. Downloading someone else's is up to them, and it starts off:
- When an album is shared with a circle, downloads are a setting for that circle.
- In a Family Hub album, an admin can allow members to download its photos.
- On a share link, whoever created the link chooses whether people can save the photos.
Each of these starts with downloads off, so nothing can be saved until the owner decides it can. Albums and links made before 5 October 2026 keep the setting they had.
Everything at once#
For the whole library rather than one album — and including your account information — use a full export instead. See Export everything.
Keeping a copy outside Keepr#
Worth saying plainly: a copy on your own drive is the only one that doesn't depend on us, or on a subscription, or on anything continuing to work. Keepr is built so you never need one, and you should have one anyway. That's true of any service, and any service that discourages it is telling you something.