Older people (seen it at 65+) will just click the nag without knowing what the button does and end up beaming up all photos to google cloud with no ability to disable the nag (it keeps showing up after a while) even when dismissed. If you are concerned about your data privacy, you may want to check on what photos of say your kids your parents are beaming up to google without their or your knowledge.
It is worse than that. It fills up your accounts cloud storage, where your Google docs, sheets, drive files etc are stored.
Once full you are caught in their trap: pay a monthly fee to the mafia or delete your data!
This flow is intentional and they have set up everything to bring you there. The Photo-Backup popup (and arguably the whole photo feature) helps to shovel users more quickly to the end of the monetization funnel.
It’s even worse than that! There is no delete all feature! So if you have 100k photos and make the mistake of saying yes to Google Photos just once, it will fill up all your storage space, block your email until you pay for extra storage, then force you to delete all your photos manually, one page at a time, before you can stop using it. I think that trap is the sleaziest thing I’ve seen Google do.
Are Google Photos stored in Google Drive? Because Google Collab has access to Google Drive so you can write some nifty Python scripts to move your data between Drive accounts and do mass renames/deletes etc.
No, I've never seen Google Photos reflected in any Google Drive interface (web, OS integration, etc.) which on the one hand makes sense (think of Google Photos more like a database-driven black box app than a hierarchical filesystem) but on the other hand Google Drive does show gdocs, gsheets, etc. (which is also sort of a black box app, as the "files" seen in GDrive are merely lightweight stubs).
Only in storage quota views do Photos and Drive (and Gmail, etc.) commingle.
Ah, bigcorp with the Pick-Up Artist model of consent: keep asking until they relent.
I find Google Photos asks me once every update. I got a Pixel 9 with 1 year of free Gemini Pro (or whatever version it is, their offering almost feels like Windows 7 Home Enterprise Ultimate), but because of their nagging about the backup I loathe to give them money to subscribe to Gemini beyond that.
I have a Google Pixel 1 I got from eBay, with "lifetime free photos backup", sitting plugged in on a shelf. Every evening my main phone syncs photos I take on it to my NAS, and another app copies the images from the NAS to that Pixel phone, which then backs it up to Google Photos... it's my finger to Google for being the enshittfiying assholes they are
I use Ente photos [0] without logging in, just as a local gallery. Since their backup solution is E2EE, it does everything on-device – face/object search, map view, memories
This exact issue was the final straw for me ditching google photos! I had previously been using syncthing to sync & backup the photos, same as other files on my phone and laptop.
I now use Immich [1] (mentioned elsewhere in this thread but without the proper link), having purchased a single-payment lifetime family licence. There is, as I understand it, no benefit to me to purchase it. After a month of use it was clear this was going to stay in use for quite a while, and the author(s) have done a fantastic job. So feel free to give it a shot, alongside google photos app on your phone, and see how you feel.
It's not for everyone though, as I have an old computer at home running as a 'server' that can host immich. There's a certain nerd level requirement (that this forum should be full of) to get it set up. For users though? It's so far seamless -- my partner uses the app on her phone and likes it just fine. The backup works for her and there's a single button to click to clear space on her phone that just deletes things immich knows are on our home server already. Very useful.
I still open google photos app to edit videos occasionally -- it's better at that, and I do still use the google built in 'camera' app, so I'm kind of using google photos while I take pictures if that makes sense.
I have a similar question: how do I stop Google photos asking me to update every time I open it?
"You're missing out
Update your Google photos app for the newest features"
... I have zero interest in updating. I'm not missing out on anything... other than being able to browse my photos without this annoying message getting in the way.
I checked on my phone. I don't have Google Photos so maybe I uninstalled it or the phone came without it. It's a Samsung so it has Samsung Gallery but I'm not logged in into a Samsung account. Photos are local. I installed Aves Gallery [1] and that's my main photo app. Backups are through Syncthing which of course is not a mass market app, but I'm a software developer and being able to use niche alternatives is one of our privileges.
And when you get at ~90% of space full is even worse! I stopped backing up photos to Google and use my local Immich instance (+ B2 remote backup) but I still haven't cleaned up the old ones from GPhotos/GDrive and it nags me in every possible way to buy more space!
I have it off. Although not backed up I see the image sorta AI scanned where, for a moment it outlines, segments people for a brief moment. Anyone notice this and what is going on?
Use the website and block the popup with uBlock Origin. Using websites will always have better UX than apps, despite what devs will tell you, even on mobile devices.
Somebody in my family who generally doesn't pay that much attention to prompts and modals was repeatedly telling me their Gmail doesn't work because it's full and - surprize - it was because Google Photos was harassing them with the backup prompt, which in a hurry, they just re-activated every time I turned it off.
After a while and much convincing (and changing Immich to be the default gallery app), we're pretty happy. Immich has been very good, it's fast enough to not be bothering, and running it on TrueNAS has been quite hands-off. I have a mirrored 6TB drive and do off-site backups to a Hetzner storage box.
Previously we were using OneDrive and the Photos archiving was horribly slow for everything but the most recent months. It was literally unusable beyond a certain date, with the UI locking up, tabs crashing, huge amounts of memory consumed by the open tab, etc. The mobile app was only marginally better, but still very slow. Immich doesn't have this problem. I scroll back years of photos and they load almost instantly from HDDs.
My reason was the irritating, and equally convulated ways they go about where they are kept - are they part of drives, if I delete those albums, do I get more space.
I came from Picasa, (20+ years ago) eventually went on to Google Photos later. I kept that one as a back-up for a pretty long time, besides being a long-time paid user. I’m still on one of their cheaper tier for the family as Google’s services are such that we got to use one or the other (read relatives, friends, extended family etc).
However, I have made sure that if I have to walk or get blocked or something of the sorts that happens to people, I will just walk - no emotions attached.
Disclaimer: Article from my own personal blog, but I did blog about why and how I completely did away with Google Photos from our core photos collection (I still use it to host a bnunch of archives for friends, and families group photos).
So... What's the modern equivalent of gallery.apk ? Looking for just a simple image viewer that shows the "collections" view by default and preferably is GPL and does not attempt any sort of internet connection.
65 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 17.5 ms ] threadOnce full you are caught in their trap: pay a monthly fee to the mafia or delete your data!
This flow is intentional and they have set up everything to bring you there. The Photo-Backup popup (and arguably the whole photo feature) helps to shovel users more quickly to the end of the monetization funnel.
And someone will complain - you can't even have sensible defaults.
I understand you perhaps have hatred for google but hosting immich or ente is not for everyone.
It is far easier for average Jose to pay for GP or some cloud.
Unless you plan to setup at least some free cloud don't bother to lecture others
Only in storage quota views do Photos and Drive (and Gmail, etc.) commingle.
The app has some very nice features that are locked behind account access though.
It's under your profile icon in the top right.
https://support.google.com/photos/thread/256212140?hl=en&msg...
I find Google Photos asks me once every update. I got a Pixel 9 with 1 year of free Gemini Pro (or whatever version it is, their offering almost feels like Windows 7 Home Enterprise Ultimate), but because of their nagging about the backup I loathe to give them money to subscribe to Gemini beyond that.
I have a Google Pixel 1 I got from eBay, with "lifetime free photos backup", sitting plugged in on a shelf. Every evening my main phone syncs photos I take on it to my NAS, and another app copies the images from the NAS to that Pixel phone, which then backs it up to Google Photos... it's my finger to Google for being the enshittfiying assholes they are
[0] https://ente.com
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
Immich is an amazing alternative. People should give it a chance. One click install: https://malmo.network/store/immich
I now use Immich [1] (mentioned elsewhere in this thread but without the proper link), having purchased a single-payment lifetime family licence. There is, as I understand it, no benefit to me to purchase it. After a month of use it was clear this was going to stay in use for quite a while, and the author(s) have done a fantastic job. So feel free to give it a shot, alongside google photos app on your phone, and see how you feel.
It's not for everyone though, as I have an old computer at home running as a 'server' that can host immich. There's a certain nerd level requirement (that this forum should be full of) to get it set up. For users though? It's so far seamless -- my partner uses the app on her phone and likes it just fine. The backup works for her and there's a single button to click to clear space on her phone that just deletes things immich knows are on our home server already. Very useful.
I still open google photos app to edit videos occasionally -- it's better at that, and I do still use the google built in 'camera' app, so I'm kind of using google photos while I take pictures if that makes sense.
[1] https://immich.app/
"You're missing out
Update your Google photos app for the newest features"
... I have zero interest in updating. I'm not missing out on anything... other than being able to browse my photos without this annoying message getting in the way.
[1] https://github.com/deckerst/aves
- click on the account icon
- choose switch account and pick use this application without an account
Somebody in my family who generally doesn't pay that much attention to prompts and modals was repeatedly telling me their Gmail doesn't work because it's full and - surprize - it was because Google Photos was harassing them with the backup prompt, which in a hurry, they just re-activated every time I turned it off.
After a while and much convincing (and changing Immich to be the default gallery app), we're pretty happy. Immich has been very good, it's fast enough to not be bothering, and running it on TrueNAS has been quite hands-off. I have a mirrored 6TB drive and do off-site backups to a Hetzner storage box.
Previously we were using OneDrive and the Photos archiving was horribly slow for everything but the most recent months. It was literally unusable beyond a certain date, with the UI locking up, tabs crashing, huge amounts of memory consumed by the open tab, etc. The mobile app was only marginally better, but still very slow. Immich doesn't have this problem. I scroll back years of photos and they load almost instantly from HDDs.
I came from Picasa, (20+ years ago) eventually went on to Google Photos later. I kept that one as a back-up for a pretty long time, besides being a long-time paid user. I’m still on one of their cheaper tier for the family as Google’s services are such that we got to use one or the other (read relatives, friends, extended family etc).
However, I have made sure that if I have to walk or get blocked or something of the sorts that happens to people, I will just walk - no emotions attached.
Disclaimer: Article from my own personal blog, but I did blog about why and how I completely did away with Google Photos from our core photos collection (I still use it to host a bnunch of archives for friends, and families group photos).
https://brajeshwar.com/2021/how-to-delete-all-photos-and-get...
[ ] Yes
[ ] Ask me again later