GoKawiilJoe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR Google has fixed a Photos bug that caused ZIP files larger than 4GB to be created incorrectly.
New downloads should now work, regardless of size.
Affected users can either re-download their content or use Google’s repair tool.
Google Photos users have recently been encountering an issue when attempting to download large archives of their pictures and videos on PC. The tech giant has now acknowledged the bug and rolled out a fix. Those who were affected will have two ways to recover their content.
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If you’re unaware of the problem, an issue with Google One Storage Manager has been causing ZIP file downloads of Google Photos content to become corrupted. Specifically, when using the tool on a PC, archives larger than 4GB would be written incorrectly. As a result, users were unable to open these downloaded ZIP files.
In a new post on the Photos support page (via PiunikaWeb), the tech giant says, “Our engineering teams have identified the cause and have fixed this bug.” The company states that any new downloads from Google Photos using the Storage Manager on your computer should now work, regardless of file size. Google also included an apology for the inconvenience: “We are very sorry for the trouble and concern this may have caused.”
As mentioned earlier, you’ll have two options if you were affected by this bug. The first option is the most straightforward, which is to re-download your content. If you don’t want to go through the download process again, then you can use Google’s new repair tool to fix the corrupted file. However, this repair tool will only remain available until June 1, 2027.
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