18h ago

Google holds my photos hostage?

edit: Solved.

The title is a bit theatrical. My google account tells me my storage is full and urges me to buy more storage. The problem is, that on my new phone G Photos just started to put all my photos into the cloud.

How can I remove my photos from the cloud without losing them locally on my phone? I tried logging out of Photos, but then I cannot access my photos. I just requested an archive download via takeout.google.com so I hopefully have a backup, but I still need to get rid of all the photos in the cloud to free up the storage.

I recently started a home server and want to move to selfhosted services, but that will take it's time, so for now, I am forced to continue google services.

Can you help me?

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8 comments

First thing, disable all auto backup on your phone. This is step 1 for anything.
If you have access to a computer, log in to Photos through a browser and delete images there and it won't affect your phone's storage. Maybe test it with an image if lesser importance before you bulk delete.
You could also move your locally stored photos to a different, temporary folder. Then delete the backed up ones in Photos. Then move the local files back.
I wouldn't rely on the Google Takeout images. If the standard settings applied, the images will all be in Google's compressed format. Granted, most people in the world couldn't tell the difference. But it might be better to keep the best quality for the future.
- First thing, disable all auto backup on your phone. This is step 1 for anything.
  I did, but turns out, it either did not save the setting or has more than one place to deactivate. I tried again and after turning backups off, there was an option to delete all backups from the cloud, wich I did after saving the photos to my pc and I got back some space. Thanks for your help.

8 comments