Since I haven't seen it mentioned yet: https://github.com/gilesknap/gphotos-sync https://github.com/gilesknap/gphotos-sync is a command-line tool (in Python)

Since I haven't seen it mentioned yet: https://github.com/gilesknap/gphotos-sync https://github.com/gilesknap/gphotos-sync is a command-line tool (in Python) that downloads (incrementally) your Google Photos content directly using the Photos API, not through Drive. I just set it up recently. The two main caveats are the lack of location info and that it won't re-download photos that have been edited.