r/googlephotos

I feel like I am in a trap. I take videos and photos often and have 1TB of space on my phone. However, I have 100GB of Google Photos.

Here's the problem. I want Backups and Google backups everything. Not much to complain about here.

If I want to delete something from the cloud while keeping it in local storage (Android phone), there is simply no way to do this easily. It would either resync the deleted items or delete from your device (depending on how you do it).

I feel like this is a predatory practice. And, with how storage works, old files will compound over time and I will continue to upgrade to more storage even though I do not need useless old videos.

Any solutions?

Sorry about the title, but I feel like I'm losing my mind.

I have automatic backup turned off on both of my devices. Currently, I'm trying to sort all my photos into albums to make them easier to manage.

So, if I have backup turned off, surely that means I can add my photos to albums without backing them up?

Wrong.

Every time I add anything to an album, it starts backing it up. I don't want it to.

I feel like I've looked everywhere in the app, but it doesn't look like there's an option to turn off backup on individual albums, and it's pretty infuriating. I just want to sort photos in peace.

Est-il possible de supprimer des photos de Google photos et de les conserver dans les albums ?

I have 1200+ photos sent on a WhatsApp group chat over past several years.

I had marked ‘Save to photos’ as OFF for Chats since I was using an older iPhone with less storage and even after upgrading to a newer model the save option was set as OFF. So I ended up with 1200+ photos in that group chat which are not saved on phone that I’m looking to transfer to Google Photos.

Is there a simple way to transfer them to an existing or new Google Photos album, without saving the photos to my phone?

There is no save all option in WhatsApp when I go to that Chat - Media and when I manually select multiple photos I am not getting save to phone option so I’m anyway unable to save to phone.

I get Save to Files option and can save to an iCloud Drive folder but when I go to Google Photos album and add photos it does not show me iCloud Drive option

I have an office laptop but WhatsApp web is blocked on it and USB transfer is also restricted so I have to use only my iPhone for transfer.

Kindly advise me on ways to do this transfer, thanks in advance.

Based on other posts I'm assuming this has been a problem for a while now but I just wanted to post in case of the slim chance there has been a fix or something?
I just checked the google photos app on my phone and the photos were there and it started backing up my recent photos and prompted an app update, after updating everything is gone from before 2025.

I have recently uploaded a lot of old photos to GP and then done some basic tidying up of the uploaded photos such that the most update photo collection is in GP and not on my drives. I think I should run Takeout and use that as a backup but my hesitation is if the Takeout download is not of the same quality.

Hi Reddit,

My Google account was permanently disabled on April 17, 2026. Google flagged it for an alleged policy violation. I strongly believe this is a mistake or false positive, and I need your help figuring out what to do next.

Account ban information

Automated reply for first appeal.

Reply for second appeal.

What happened

• I migrated approximately 5,000 photos from an older Google account to this one
• I personally reviewed every single photo I uploaded, found nothing problematic
• The flagged content may have originated from backed-up media from years ago that I never individually reviewed
• I was completely unaware of any violating content in my account

What I stand to lose

• ~500 GB of Google Photos collected over 10 years, irreplaceable memories and family photos
• Google Maps saved locations and travel history
• Gmail linked to multiple businesses and 100+ websites, SSO logins will break
• Google Drive files critical to my work
• Google Keep with stored ideas and notes
• YouTube history, recommendations, and paid subscriptions

What I've tried

1. Submitted 2 appeals through Google's official appeal portal
2. Both denied, Google says the account cannot be restored, future appeals will be closed
3. Google Takeout is inaccessible, I cannot download my own personal data

My questions for this community

1. Has anyone successfully recovered an account after two appeal denials?
2. Is there any way to access Google Takeout when an account is locked?
3. Should I pursue a formal legal data access request under Indian law?
4. Is there a way to contact a human Google reviewer?
5. Has anyone dealt with account suspension after importing older media?

I have 10 years of irreplaceable personal and professional data at stake. This automated decision is affecting my livelihood and mental health.

Any help, advice, or direction is greatly appreciated 🙏

hello! i have been using google photos for 2 years now, and i store all my concert videos in there. however, ive gone to renew my plan (i usually get 200gb a month) and its not letting me whatsoever. i’ve uninstalled the app and thats not done anything. i went on the browser and it wont let me do anything, so then i went onto the app store and the option to change my subscription from there isnt showing up. ive contacted google but they were no help. i have a concert tomorrow and no storage on my phone, what should i do?

The obvious solution is to just use GoogleTakout to download everything and then just delete all the photos in google photos. This makes it a pain to make sure you didn't miss anything and that you aren't accidentally permanently losing some pictures.

Are there any good ways to do it? It seems impossible to do within google photos so 3rd party options are more than welcome.

I want to download all of my photos to my pixel phone but if i do that from the app it gets out of order. google takeout will have the same issue. is there any good way to download them and keep the metadata?

before the March 31 deadline I switched my billing to Google directly for the Google One 2 TB $99 annual plan.

I previously had the $15/month Unlimited Photos plan from TMobile.

But it is still showing on my TMobile bill as an active benefit and I am being billed for it this month even tho the benefit ended on March 31.

Also on the Google One / Google Photos app it shows I still have unlimited photos with my storage usage crossed out.

even tho on the Google One membership page it confirms my $99 annual 2TB plan.

Anyone else?

Should I manually remove the TMobile add on to take it off my bill?

I was expecting it to be removed by itself since it's discontinued.

With all the recent stories about account bans, I created a separate account to hold photos.

Here is my concern now, this new account is still linked to me, it has the same recovery phone number and email address etc. Also when creating the account it had me scan a QR so it is somehow also linked to my phone.

Am I still at risk of having all of my accounts banned because they can detect they are all managed by me?

guys please help me my school email will be deleted soon and i have nearly 200GB of photos!!!!!I tried moving it around different emails but that doesn’t really help since one normal account has about 15GB of storage.I know many would say just buy storage but i can’t bother my parents with stuff like this because they are strongly against paying monthly and honestly we don’t have the money to pay it every month.

Is there a way to unsync iCloud from Google Photos? I recently downloaded Google Photos and realized all my old pictures from previous phones were there. I wanted to keep them separate from my current pictures, however all my current pictures synced and I didn’t want that. I’ve tried:

•Deleting current pics: Also deletes from iCloud

•Turning off backup: Deleting still syncs, new pictures still sync

•Removing Full Access: Then I can’t see any pictures, new or old

I read that backup helped others, but not for me :/ I also saw I can delete pictures on the website and it won’t sync to iCloud. Still, new pictures I take will show up on Google.

If anyone has figured out a way to unsync them, pleaseeeeee let me know!

The second appeal was denied, I took inspiration from yours and other's comments/posts that were in similar situations but it did not work. Thank you to those that have commented, any potential help would be greatly appreciated going forward.

I was told that if you delete from GP then you lose from your device when they're set to sync. So I ran a test & found that wasn't true (for me). The photo stayed on the phone for days until I went back & asked about it.

I was then told the photo will stay on the device for 60 days. So I ran a test again. Deleted from GP & waited to see if it would delete from the phone. Over 2 months later - still there on the phone.

But in the back of my mind I thought if I delete everything then THAT'S the time it WILL delete from the phone, so didn't do it.

My Google account started filling up rapidly and so I had to turn OFF sync. So my photos stopped syncing to my Google account well over 12 months ago.

Some photos that are still in GP are still on my phone whereas some have since been deleted.

My question is - if I turn sync back ON, would it start from scratch or if there's photos that have been deleted from GP but not my phone while sync was turned off, will these then be deleted from my phone?

Side question - any idea as to why they never deleted from my phone in the first instance when I was told they would?

SG24.

https://preview.redd.it/xyrgbb8lpbwg1.png?width=1014&format=png&auto=webp&s=5dbbd28450532ef324cd4fb135ccc24a0fd6e9ad

As you may see, I have 500GB of photos & videos. I have so many of my son's photos all the way from the day he was born. I'm now concerned about the false positives of CSAM and want to back up the photos. What's the best way to do this?

Will take-out work? I've seen topics about JSON files. Do I need to merge them? I'm planning to upload all the photos to an alternate email address so that my main email address is not banned. How can I do the shifting efficiently?

Thanks in Advance.