How to Leave Your Photos to Someone When You Die

Google takes a slightly less sick approach. You can configure Account manager inactive so that if you don’t log in for three, six, 12 or 18 months, your selected contacts will be emailed with a link to download all your data.

However, these solutions seem a bit one-sided. I certainly don’t want to give any future hypothetical kids access to my Photo Library. Without too many pictures, let’s say Elon Musk can’t leave enough cash to cover the treatment bills.

Sort them first

Now, the hard part. If you want to leave your kids all the family photos without the screenshots, memes, blurry food photos, and questionable nudity, you’ll need to categorize them yourself.

There are several options here:

1. Go through all the photos on your smartphone and add the best photos to the album. You can use apps like Photos of Gemini or Sliding box to make the process a little faster, but it will still take a lot of time.
2. Come up with a list of events, memories, and trips you’d like to leave photos of, and purposefully go through your photos to find images of them. This will probably take less time but will require more effort. Alternatively, you can use the machine learning-based search tools of Apple Photos and Google Photos to help.
3. Do a better job of adding photos you love to your favorites as you take them.

Regardless of your age, the process won’t get any easier the longer you leave it on. How many photos did you take in your first decade of using a smartphone? Now, imagine spending 30 years in a hospital bed.

Seriously, if you’re having kids now and want to leave them photos of their babies, start an album today and add your favorites to it. Plus, it will make backing them up easier.

Store everything physically

Digital data exists for a surprisingly short period of time. A hard drive can last three years, an SSD can last five years, and an SD card or USB drive too — though neither is guaranteed. Web services, if any, are less reliable. They may not have lost your data to rot, but you can’t count on companies to stick around.

That’s not to say don’t keep photos on your hard drive or store them in Google Photos, but if you want your grandchildren to be able to access them, you’ll need to do better.