google-photos-link

name	google-photos-link
description	Download and view photos from a public Google Photos share link (photos.app.goo.gl or photos.google.com/share). Use whenever a Google Photos link should be viewed, described, or analyzed — web_fetch alone returns album metadata, never the pixels.

Google Photos Link Access

Why this skill exists

A Google Photos share link does not point at an image file. It points at a JavaScript web app. Calling web_fetch on the link returns only the album shell: a title, an og:image thumbnail, and a list of links to per-photo pages. It does not give you the photos themselves. To actually see the images you have to walk one extra layer: open each photo's page, pull out its direct lh3.googleusercontent.com image URL, and download the bytes. This skill encodes that walk so you don't rediscover it each time.

Quickest path: run the script

A tested helper does the whole walk. Prefer it over doing the steps by hand.

# Download viewable JPEGs (longest side 2048px) into ./photos/
python3 scripts/fetch_google_photos.py "<share_url>" --out ./photos --width 2048

# Then open them to actually look:
#   view ./photos/photo_01.jpg   (etc.)

Other modes:

python3 scripts/fetch_google_photos.py "<url>" --original   # full-resolution originals (=d)
python3 scripts/fetch_google_photos.py "<url>" --list       # print direct image URLs, download nothing

The script accepts the short link, the full album link, or a single-photo link. After it finishes, view the downloaded files — downloading is not the goal; seeing the images is. Report what you see.

What the link looks like (so you can sanity-check it)

Form	Example
Short	https://photos.app.goo.gl/C3aVzvb4GpZ9NA2e8
Full album	https://photos.google.com/share/AF1Qip…?key=RDdF…
Single photo	https://photos.google.com/share/AF1Qip…/photo/AF1Qip…?key=RDdF…

The key= token is the share credential. If a link has no key, it is almost certainly a private album and this approach will hit a login wall.

The manual method (for debugging, or if the script breaks)

Do this by hand only when the script fails and you need to see where.

1. Resolve the link. web_fetch (or curl -sL) the share URL. The short goo.gl link 302-redirects to photos.google.com/share/<ALBUM_ID>?key=<KEY>. The returned HTML's og:title tells you the album name and photo count.

2. Collect photo IDs from the album page. The album HTML contains one link per photo of the form /share/<ALBUM_ID>/photo/<PHOTO_ID>?key=<KEY>. Extract every <PHOTO_ID> and de-duplicate while preserving order: grep -oE '/photo/[A-Za-z0-9_-]+'. (The album page does not contain the full-size image URLs — only the cover, via og:image. That's why step 3 is needed.)

3. Get each photo's direct image URL. Fetch each photo page. Its HTML embeds the real image at a thumbnail size, e.g. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/<TOKEN>=s250-k-no. Grab the base (everything before =): grep -oE 'https://lh3\.googleusercontent\.com/[A-Za-z0-9_/-]+' | head -1.

4. Resize via the URL suffix, then download. The lh3 base URL is a resizer. Append a suffix and curl the result:

   • =w2048-no → longest side 2048px, aspect preserved, no upscaling (-no is what prevents upscaling and extra server processing).
   • =w1280-no, =s1024, =w1920-h1080 → other size options.
   • =d → the original bytes at full quality and native dimensions (also the only way to pull the original of a video).

5. View the files. Open each downloaded JPEG with the view tool and describe / analyze as asked.

Picking a size

• Just viewing / describing: --width 2048 is plenty and keeps files small.
• Reading fine detail (text, engraving, small labels): try --width 4096, or --original to avoid re-compression artifacts. Note =w{N}-no never upscales, so for an image whose original is smaller than N you'll get the original size regardless.
• User wants the actual files to keep: --original.

Limitations — know these before promising results

• Public link-shared albums only. If the album was shared privately to specific Google accounts (no key= in the URL), the pages return a sign-in wall and there is nothing to scrape. Tell the user it needs to be shared "by link" / "anyone with the link."
• Links can expire or be revoked. The owner can turn off link sharing at any time, after which the same URL stops working.
• Videos: the per-photo page exposes a poster frame for stills easily; for video, =d on the base may fetch the original file, but playback/streaming variants are out of scope here.
• Consent interstitials: in some regions Google serves a cookie-consent page to non-browser clients. If the script returns 0 photos but the link works in a browser, fall back to curl -sL with a browser User-Agent and inspect the HTML, or have the user open it in an incognito window to confirm it's public.
• Respect privacy. Only fetch links the user has supplied or clearly wants opened. Don't enumerate or guess album/photo IDs.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
"no photos found"	private album / missing key	Confirm the link opens in an incognito window; ask owner to share by link
0 photos but link works in browser	consent page or odd UA handling	Re-run with a browser User-Agent; inspect raw HTML for a redirect/consent form
Downloaded file isn't a valid image	grabbed an interstitial, not the image	Check file <name>; re-extract the lh3 base from the photo page
Image looks low-res	size suffix too small, or original is small	Use --width 4096 or --original; remember -no won't upscale
Syntax error: "(" unexpected in a shell loop	script ran under /bin/sh, not bash	Use the Python helper, or write bash to a file and run bash file.sh