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Jiotty Photos Uploader is a simple desktop application for Windows, macOS and Linux that scans a folder, including all subfolders, for photos and videos, and uploads them to your Google Photos gallery arranging into albums according to the directory structure.

How it works

When creating albums, each album name is composed of all the intermediate folders in the hierarchy, separated by colon. Each media item is uploaded to the album corresponding to its location in the folder hierarchy. For example, the following structure:

Folder1
    photo1.jpg
    Folder2
       video1.mov    
photo2.jpg

will result in this layout in your Google Photos gallery:

Media item	Will be uploaded to album
photo1.jpg	Folder1
photo2.jpg	Will not be added to any album
video1.mov	Folder1: Folder2

The app is able to resume where it left off, so it will not attempt to re-upload all those photos and videos it already uploaded, unless you ask it to.

FAQ

Can I upload photos in "high resolution" instead of "original resolution"?

No. Google Photos API does not support this (true as of May 2020). So all media uploaded will be in original resolution and so will take up space in your Google Account.

If a photo has already been uploaded, will duplicate be created?

No.

If a photo or video has been uploaded by this app, and you selected to resume uploads, Jiotty will not even attempt to upload it again.
If a photo or video has been uploaded by this app, and you selected not to resume uploads, Jiotty will upload it again, but Google Photos will match it to the previously uploaded photo, and no duplicate will be created.
If a photo or video has been uploaded by yourself before via Google Photos web interface or a smartphone app, or any other 3rd party app, and you asked Jiotty to upload the same photo or video, Jiotty will upload it again, but Google Photos will match it to the previously uploaded photo, and no duplicate will be created. Unfortunately, Jiotty will not be able to add this photo to the album that matches the folder, due to the Google Photos API limitation, see more on limitations below.

If an album existed, will a duplicate be created?

No.

If the album was created by Jiotty before, it will just be reused.
If the album was created by yourself via Google Photos we interface or app, it will not be reused - see limitations below. The upload of all items located in the corresponding folder will fail. Please rename or delete the existing album and try uploading again.

How do I ignore certain files or folders?

Open Settings (Preferences on macOS) via menu and add file or folder patterns as regular expressions. If you do not know what regular expressions are, go google it :-) or simply add file names you want to ignore, one per line.

Sometimes the uploader seems to be stuck loading albums or uploading files

This is most likely due to the Google Photos API quota of 10,000 requests per day per application. This quota is, unfortunately, shared by all users of the application. Since version 1.0.3, the uploader shows a flashing warning sign explaining what is happening. I will have to pay Google to increase the quota, but in order to do that I'll have to start charging users for the usage, which is not what I want. In the future I may be able to add an ability to supply your own Google project's credentials to work around the issue. For now the only solution is to wait or stop and try again later.

Limitations

Certain limitations exist because Google Photos API does not allow applications to do certain things that a user can do using Google Photos native apps or web interface.

If an album was created by yourself in Google Photos, and this album happen to have the same name as the folder that you asked Jiotty to upload, then Jiotty will not be able to add any items to it. The items will be uploaded, but not added to any album and you’ll see failures in the app. Please rename or delete the existing album and try uploading again.
If a photo or video has been uploaded by yourself before via Google Photos web interface or a smartphone app, or any other 3rd party app, and you asked Jiotty to upload the same photo or video, Jiotty will upload it again, but Google Photos will match it to the previously uploaded photo, and no duplicate will be created. However, Jiotty will not be able to add this photo to the album that matches the folder, due to the Google Photos API limitation described here: https://developers.google.com/photos/library/guides/manage-albums#adding-items-to-album. In essence, Jiotty will only be able to add items it uploaded to the albums it created.
Google Photos knows a lot of media formats. It is able to extract creation date and time from an image of video file's metadata, such as EXIF or similar, i.e. the date/time written by your camera into the file, and assign this date/time to the item in your library. This works with Jiotty uploads too. However, when you upload an item that does not have creation time in its metadata, Google Photos web interface uses the file's modification time. This is the time you last written to the file, not the time the photo/video was actually taken. This is less reliable than metadata, but in many cases it's better than nothing. Unfortunately, Google Photos API does not allow setting dates and times on uploaded media. Therefore, Jiotty is unable to emulate same behaviour. So if your file does not have creation date/time in its metadata, Google Photos will use the date/time the file was uploaded, not the time it was last modified on your disk. The only workaround you can apply here is use tools like https://exiftool.org or similar and some scripting skills to update metadata in your files to match the file's modification time and then upload this files using Jiotty.
Google Photos API does not support uploading media in "high" resolution (true as of May 2020). So all uploaded media will be in "original" resolution and so will take up space in your Google Account.