How does Google photos work?

StevieP · 19 Mar 2020 at 22:18

I've always stored my camera photos and videos on my micro SD card but now I've got a OP 7T I don't have that luxury.

Not wanting to clog up my limited 128GB of space I've enabled my media to be backed up to my Google account but I'm wondering what the process is for where the photo or video is stored?

For example, if I record a video I presume it is initially stored on the phone but then once it's been uploaded to Google photos, is the local copy deleted or does that need to be done manually?

neoboy · 19 Mar 2020 at 23:36

Stays there until you delete it from your device. If you delete it while in Google Photos app though, it will delete it from the cloud and any synced device.

GMac11 · 20 Mar 2020 at 10:06

@neoboy is correct but also note there is a feature in Google Photos that can automatically 'tidy' up your phone by routinely deleting content on your phone that has been successfully uploaded to GP.

mrochester · 20 Mar 2020 at 11:23

Bear in mind that once your photos are in google photos and deleted from your device that it is really hard to get them out and onto other drives/cloud storage services.

The only sensible way I’ve found to download my sisters many years worth of photos from google photos is to use your GDPR rights to access your data, but google provide a series of downloads with a slew of redundant folders and files instead of just supplying you with the JPEGs in one folder, so it comes down as a huge mess.

My advice would be to take a local backup of your photos from your phone before allowing them to be uploaded to google photos and deleted from your phone.

Sp00n · 20 Mar 2020 at 11:35

I just select all and download all?

...hm maybe i haven't done the whole lot though, I should try that.

mrochester · 20 Mar 2020 at 11:43

Sp00n said:
I just select all and download?

You can’t because once you’ve selected the first photo at the top and scrolled to the bottom and selected the last photo, none of the photos in the middle have loaded so the selection fails.

Scottland · 20 Mar 2020 at 11:46

Sp00n said:
I just select all and download?

I was trying this recently when moving Google accounts - I couldn't see a way to select all without scrolling through thousands of photos?

Anyway with regards to the OP - the Photos app will prompt you now and then to 'free up space' by deleting local copies of files already backed up. Alternatively in the settings menu of the app is a 'free up space' option that does the same.

mrochester · 20 Mar 2020 at 11:51

Does anyone know of a way to get google photos to sync photos across multiple devices,e.g., take photo on phone, upload to google photos, delete from phone memory to save space, go to your laptop, open google photos app and have it download a copy of that photo so that it is stored both locally and in the cloud?

Scottland · 20 Mar 2020 at 11:52

No but OneDrive still downloads locally if you want extra redundancy then use that as well?

Sp00n · 20 Mar 2020 at 12:25

mrochester said:
You can’t because once you’ve selected the first photo at the top and scrolled to the bottom and selected the last photo, none of the photos in the middle have loaded so the selection fails.

Yea I see that now, you would have to go through each day and select them.

I've just used takeout.google.com to download my google photos, it creates one large zip and has the photos in subdirs by date, if you want them all in one big folder you would just extract the zip and do a find all photos, then move them to wherever you want, seems pretty straight forward to me.

mrochester · 20 Mar 2020 at 12:29

Sp00n said:
Yea I see that now, you would have to go through each day and select them.

I've just used takeout.google.com to download my google photos, it creates one large zip and has the photos in subdirs by date, if you want them all in one big folder you would just extract the zip and do a find all photos, then move them to wherever you want, seems pretty straight forward to me.

Or in my sisters case, 11 large downloads.

Sp00n · 20 Mar 2020 at 12:36

Yea I'm still not seeing how its really hard, extract 11 zips, move files.

550gb of pictures is impressive though.

mrochester · 20 Mar 2020 at 12:39

Sp00n said:
Yea I'm still not seeing how its really hard, extract 11 zips, move files.

550gb of pictures is impressive though.

Well having to dip in and out of each folder is pretty time consuming.

Its approx 21gb of photos since each zip is 2gb.

Sp00n · 20 Mar 2020 at 12:40

You can change the size of the zip file

You wouldn't need to dip in and out of anything, extract all to a folder, find all pictures, move to a single folder, done.

GMac11 · 20 Mar 2020 at 14:14

In practice if Google Photos is your one and only backup option then you're eventually asking for trouble. I think GP is a brilliant tool and all my photos are on it so I can access across different devices but I have a Hard Drive kept in storage as a back up.

mrochester · 20 Mar 2020 at 14:16

GMac11 said:
In practice if Google Photos is your one and only backup option then you're eventually asking for trouble. I think GP is a brilliant tool and all my photos are on it so I can access across different devices but I have a Hard Drive kept in storage as a back up.

Never ever rely on a cloud only solution to backup your valuable stuff.

Make sure your cloud service syncs local copies OR take a separate backup.

Squink · 20 Mar 2020 at 14:19

GMac11 said:
In practice if Google Photos is your one and only backup option then you're eventually asking for trouble.

Yep - there may come a date when an email pops up in your inbox - Important News About Google Photos - followed by notice of a tiered payment plan going forward.

mrochester · 20 Mar 2020 at 14:24

mulpsmebeauty said:
Yep - there may come a date when an email pops up in your inbox - Important News About Google Photos - followed by notice of a tiered payment plan going forward.

Or you lose access to your account.

deuse · 21 Mar 2020 at 07:09

StevieP said:
I've always stored my camera photos and videos on my micro SD card but now I've got a OP 7T I don't have that luxury.

Not wanting to clog up my limited 128GB of space I've enabled my media to be backed up to my Google account but I'm wondering what the process is for where the photo or video is stored?

For example, if I record a video I presume it is initially stored on the phone but then once it's been uploaded to Google photos, is the local copy deleted or does that need to be done manually?

Click on an album and then click on the three vertical dots at the top right. You’ll see an option called Download All.

That's what I do.