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I want to automate the process of downloading my Google Takeout data and uploading it somewhere else. The part of handling the file and uploading it is already done (here is my self answer about that).

But what's still missing is getting the archive. I couldn't find any way to do that. The closest I got is this question where none of the answers tells me how to create a Takeout archive, one claims that it "seems to be almost impossible", but that was in 2014, and this help page, which seems to be about something else, not Google Takeout (or maybe it is? I didn't understand everything).
The reason why I didn't just put a bounty onto the existing question is that I don't want the files on Google Drive (which can be done directly when creating the archive), but download them.

I would prefer a simple "one cmd line to create the archive, one to download it" solution, but if it requires writing a program, so be it.
I want the archive to be complete, so not just GMail or Google Drive.
I'm using Debian 9.6, but that should likely not matter.

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  • Contrary to the superuser.com answer, it should definitely be possible to do it somehow. In the worst case, it would just open a browser window in the background and click the correct buttons there. But that's the least practical solution. Sending the correct signals to the server would also work, but there's probably some proper API, as for all Google services.
    – Fabian Röling
    Dec 21, 2018 at 12:14
  • Here is another claim from 2014 that there is no Google Takeout API.
    – Fabian Röling
    Dec 21, 2018 at 12:18
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    The current name of Google Takeout is "Download your data". Just go to takeout.google.com or checkout Download your data. Unfortunately there isn't an API for it. If it exist it should have a page a micro-site on developers.google.com as Google do for all their APIs.
    – Rubén - People First ♦
    Jan 5, 2019 at 5:36
  • Then the only way would be to automate the clicks on the website.
    – Fabian Röling
    Jan 5, 2019 at 11:03
  • So were you able to do that by automating the clicks? I know that it's difficult to do with Google services cause they have bot detection and may ban the ip for some time.
    – cliffroot
    May 17, 2019 at 17:29

1 Answer 1

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Currently (April 2021), https://takeout.google.com/ has options to either perform a one-time export or to schedule exports every 2 months for a year (6 archives).

The archive can be delivered as a download link via email or added to Drive/Dropbox/OneDrive/Box. However, I have failed to get the scheduled exports to cloud drives to actually work.

How to choose cloud drives, instead of download

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  • I've noticed that already, but this one year limit is pretty bad. I wanted it to do annually or maybe a little bit more often (since it's a 144GB Download and then a 144GB upload), so I would have to initiate it manually every time again. But for others this might be a valid answer.
    – Fabian Röling
    Jun 25, 2019 at 1:17
  • I actually don't see this option, did they remove it in the past month or am I dumb?
    – lahwran
    Jul 18, 2019 at 19:07
  • Aha! I'm dumb, I expected it to be in the first step. It's in the second step.
    – lahwran
    Jul 18, 2019 at 19:08
  • Anyone else having problems with schedule exports? They are creating days or even weeks late, is it normal? I am making backup every two months and instead of manually clicking it every time I wanted it to create automatically, but due to this behavior it became impossible.
    – cerbin
    Aug 9, 2021 at 16:46

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