Google Photos tools
Privacy
These are personal tools, run by one person, for moving a family photo archive into Google Photos. They touch only the photos they upload themselves, and nothing is shared with anyone.
What these apps are
photos_uploader, Photos Deduper, photos_uploader_3 and photos_uploader_4 are private utilities operated by James Dowzard. They are not products, they are not distributed, and they are not offered to the public. Their only users are me and the family members whose own archives are being migrated, each of whom connects their own Google account deliberately.
Their job is narrow: copy photos and videos from an external hard drive into the account holder's own Google Photos library, organise them into albums, and then verify that every file actually arrived.
What they access
Each app requests three Google Photos scopes and nothing else:
- photoslibrary.appendonly
- Add photos and videos to the library. It cannot read what is already there.
- photoslibrary.readonly.appcreateddata
- Read back only the items this app uploaded — used to confirm each file landed intact.
- photoslibrary.edit.appcreateddata
- Organise only the items this app uploaded, into albums.
The distinction matters: the account holder's existing photos are outside these scopes entirely. The apps cannot see them, cannot read them and cannot change them.
Where the data goes
Photos and videos go to the account holder's own Google Photos library and nowhere else. A working record — filenames, sizes, checksums, capture dates and whether each file uploaded successfully — is kept on a private machine on my home network to support the verification step. That record contains no image content.
What never happens
- No data is sold, rented or shared with anyone.
- No advertising, profiling or analytics is built from it.
- No third-party service receives it, and no AI model is trained on it.
- No human other than the account holder and me ever views it.
Google's limited use requirements
These apps' use and transfer of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
Keeping control of it
Access can be withdrawn at any time at myaccount.google.com/permissions, which immediately stops all access. Photos already in a Google Photos library belong to the account holder and are managed there as normal. The local working record is deleted on request.
Contact
Questions about any of this go to [email protected].
Last updated 21 September 2026.