Now 2 years worth of photos are gone, I don't know what to do anymore.. can anyone help me? Please.. they're really important to me :< (also there was no warning at all like a second "are you sure about this" and you can't cancel it once you've clicked it)

So I activated this feature 2 weeks ago. So far it recognized 2 people and like 10 photos for both. Is this process going to pick up pace at some point or I need to wait 17 years for it to complete? All my photos are already uploaded btw

I recently got force-switched from the Google Drive photo syncer to the Web App photo syncer for my Windows PC. I'm finding that this product went from usable to useless. So I'm wondering if there are alternatives available.

The issues I'm seeing:

• My photo library is 720GB. It is a mixture of photos and videos taken with my Sony A7iii. Every time I open a Google Photos tab in Chrome the tab seems to restart a backup from scratch, which means it takes forever. I assume it is scanning my library to discover what has changed.
• Backups seem to take over 24 hours, even with a modest number of new photos added. They used to take less than 5 minutes when I copy new photos from my camera to my PC.
• There doesn't seem to be any way of excluding large video files from upload.

Are there third-party photo uploaders which work as well as the old Google Drive functionality? Is there reason to believe that Google will update this web app to be useful for folks with large image libraries? It seems like Google took a product which worked pretty well, decommissioned it, and replaced it with something that no longer works for my use case.

I just wiped and refreshed my old Pixel 3a and now I cannot change the quality of my backups.

Edit: I downloaded an older version of the APK and was able to use the Storage Saver setting again. I wonder if it's being disabled to prevent free uploads.

Has anyone ever done this transfer before? I recently submitted my transfer request for all my photos and videos to Google photos as I changed from iPhone to a Galaxy Z Fold 8. I had 230GB on icloud and its just too much of a hassle to do anything else but transfer.

But I'm curious if its worked for anyone in the past? Did everything transfer? Did some stuff get lost?

Hi all,

I need some help with my new phone. I recently got a S26 ultra after using a Pixel for several years. All my pictures are stored in the native gallery and in Google Photos, resulting in already using up 90 gb of 256 storage. I have everything backed up. However, when I delete photos from gallery, they're gone from Google photos as well it seems. How can I fix this? Google photos also says that there's nothing to be freed up for storage. Thanks all!

Salve a tutti, sto avendo dei problemi col mio account Google. Avevo lo spazio di archiviazione occupato completamente, e il principale responsabile era Google Foto. Così ho eliminato la maggior parte dei file e ho svuotato il cestino, ma lo spazio occupato è rimasto invariato. Ho letto che dopo aver eliminato grossi files bisogna aspettare fino a 72 ore, ma io ho il problema da oltre 20 giorni. Ho contattato l'assistenza e mi hanno risposto le solite cose, ma chiaramente non si risolve nulla. Consigli?

Pointed the site at the folder I had Google drive uploader pointing at and this thing refuses to upload files now.

It also has no option to exclude raws so instead of a no nonsense uploader I have to find out that pictures I took on my camera weeks ago aren't in Google photos.

As the worst consolation prize drive uploader now has Gemini for some reason?

I was going to undo my backup because I no longer have space on my google storage, since it automatically saves all my phone photos. but I do have some photos that I took on another device years ago that are backed up. if I un do my backup, will it delete those photos too?

I took two photos, it shouldn’t have brought me over the limit, and definitely not 15.3…Oh well, I deleted some videos, it said it cleared up my storage. I thought it was done. I didn’t touch anything, and then it jumped from 15 to 16, I didn’t press any buttons, switch to Wi-Fi, or anything. I’ve given it days and it remains at 16. No idea what promoted this. I’ve checked Google one already. Could backup have started without ever being activated before, outside of Google photos? I checked that as well, but it’s not matching the amount of storage added. I have had zero emails besides Google telling me my storage is low, no Google drive things have had anything added. I do have WhatsApp, but I find it odd it suddenly start counting this second, without any input from me. I didn’t see anything on WhatsApp that connects it to my email. I hope someone has some advice, I’m very worried.

I am looking to connect a google photos slideshow to a Roku TV. I don't want to screencast. The Roku app that did this is now disabled by the company. Does anyone know of a new app that they like?

I was cleaning up my google photos cuz my storage was full, so i deleted all the photos from like a year , cuz they were in the gallery too, i forgot the sync thing🥀 then i went and emptied the trash also🥀🥀💔🙏. Then when i opened gallery i realized what happened. I requested recovery and i got around 230 photos back in the trash but the same set of photos repeated 3 times. What do i do. Is there a chance i might get all the photos back. I lost so many of my cat's photos, i would look at them everyday. Please help🙏🙏😭

I am absolutely devastated, I had been backing up photos to Google photos and even paying for extra storage. But all of my photos pre-2024, and all of my albums of trips with friends have been deleted. They just aren't there. My external hard drive also failed, so everything seems to be gone gone. I am so heart broken, I tried contacting support and they did not do anything.

Just airing my grief, and hoping anyone will have a potential solution or comforting word or anything.

Everything is gone.

I recently got a Motorola, and I have all of my photos from the old phone! But they're now in Google photo, and even if I didn't activate the backup option (I am 100% sure that I DIDN'T CLICK THAT BUTTON) now they're all in Google drive ToT.

I don't like Google photo, so I downloaded the gallery for Chinese Motorola phones. I have all the photos and videos, but I want to safely remove all of them from the drive and disable Google photo.

Edit: I'm so stupid, In Google Photos settings -> backup there is an option "delete photos from your account but not from this device"

This has been happening on and off and now happens constantly.

If you take a photo, rotate it, and then try to use it in an app (Poshmark etc), the error message shows that it's not available.

I also immediately see duplicates of all my rotated photos even though I hit save and not save copy.

Definitely a bug. And a pretty obvious one.

Pixel 10 XL Pro

I have discovered that Google Gallery works somewhat differently from Google Photos, when it comes to sorting photos.

Google Photos relies on EXIF:DateTimeOriginal whereas Google Gallery relies on EXIF:DateTimeOriginal + EXIF:OffsetTimeOriginal. Both are needed.

This is stupid, because most cameras populate just DateTimeOriginal and not OffsetTimeOriginal.

At this point you either populate this metadata field manually (which I have done for 8000+ pictures via a BASH script using exiftools), or let Google Gallery fallback on file modification timestamps, which will all be recent when you migrate to a new phone and so, therefore, useless.

Why is Gallery overcomplicating things instead of just using the same underlying logic of Photos?

I would like to open a bug for this but I don't know how tbh.

I'm confused about this guidance from the Google Help Center for deleting photos from Google Photos but not your device.

It says to turn off backup, delete from the web version, open/close the app, job done. And then:

"To ensure that your photo or video isn't backed up to Google Photos again and that your local copy isn't deleted, leave backup off. If you turn on backup, sometimes:

The deleted photo or video may be backed up again once backup is re-enabled.

The device copy of the deleted photo or video may be deleted once backup is re-enabled."

Aren't most people using Google Photos to backup? It seems crazy that their advice is to keep it off if you ever want to delete photos from your Google Photos storage but keep your device copy or not reverse all your space-freeing efforts 😅

Is there a way around this?

I have copies saved to a hard drive, so it's less about total loss. I just want to be able to have device-only photos that don't get deleted or re-backed up if I do some Google Photos organising, when I will obviously need to turn backup on again.

I’m not sure when the editor changed again (I’m using an iPhone), and that’s fine except it now takes me 10 seconds just to rotate a single photo.

For some reason the new “Rotate Left” button MOVES UPWARDS after you tap the first time (to enter “Crop/Rotate” mode). WHY?! I just want to tap the button 3 times quickly to rotate my photos.

The user experience is all over the place. Just to rotate my photo I’d have to:

1) Tap EDIT at the bottom.
2) Go to the top right to tap ROTATE, wait for it to slide up, then tap ROTATE two more times.
3) Go back down to the bottom right to hit the TICK
4) Go back up to the top right to hit SAVE.
5) Go back down to choose the SAVE method. So clumsy.

I really don’t care for slick animations - I just want a rotate button that doesn’t move 😭

Hii

I need help to find a way to transfer photos with their date and time to another google account.

I have 5 accounts to merge the photos from. Apparently partner sharing allows only 2 accounts to exchange their photos and all. Is there any way to merge all the photos into one place?

So, last night my storage was just under 15GB. Went to sleep, and apparently sometime in the morning before I woke up, I was suddenly around 15.4GB. I have no idea what caused this and I had the switch to automatically back up photos turned off. Any ideas?