r/googlephotos

Google One storage manager is telling me that I am running out of storage (100GB). Most of the storage is from Google photos. If I transfer the photos from one Google account to a new account, then delete the photos from the original account, can I cut down on storage space? If so, how should I transfer the photos?

I just added thousands of old photos to Google Photos on the web. They've just appeared on my phone and I don't know how to remove from the device.

Under 'free up space', they're not showing up.

Can anyone help me remove these, ty.

I am at my breaking point. I have over 85,000 photos in my library and the number still increasing, and Google Photos has completely failed to manage all faces.

The core problem?

The "Unrecognized" faces or "Face available to Add" We all know they are there buried deep and Google makes it impossible to see a list of them. You can't search, filter or even use the AI Ask photos feature. The manually clicking through 85,000 photos to find which ones have an "Available to add" tag is a literal prison sentence. I contacted Google one support, and you know the answer.

Seriously I considered leaving for other services, but the "Google One" ecosystem trap is too strong specially with AI package. I was locked in. So, I decided to stop waiting for Google to fix their product and built my own scanner to extract these hidden faces.

I used AI to build a custom tool that scans my library, identifies exactly which photos have faces waiting for a name, and exports the direct links into a clean CSV file.

The Solution: Targeted Face Discovery

This script doesn't just "scrape" it mimics human behavior to avoid being bot, carefully navigating your library to find those "Available to add" tags that are impossible to search for manually.

How to reclaim your library (Step-by-Step):

Just a heads up: these steps are a general overview. I’m not a developer, so if you get stuck along the way, don't hesitate to use an AI assistant to help you debug or clarify any part of the process

• Install Python
• Install VS Code
• Setup Your Folder
• Create a new folder on your Desktop and name it GooglePhotosScanner.
• Open VS Code.
• Click File > Open Folder and select the GooglePhotosScanner folder you just created. In VS Code, look at the sidebar on the left.
• Right-click in the empty space, select New File, and name it scan.py.
• Copy the code block paste it into the file, and press Command + S (or Ctrl + S on Windows) to save it.

Python

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
import csv
import sys
import time

sys.stdout.reconfigure(line_buffering=True)

# Settings
MAX_WAIT_TIME = 2.0 
BASE_WAIT = 1.0 

def run():
    print("--- Starting Scan with Robust Navigation ---")
    
    # Start the timer
    start_time = time.time()
    
    total_scanned = 0
    faces_found = 0
    no_faces = 0
    
    with sync_playwright() as p:
        browser = p.chromium.connect_over_cdp("http://127.0.0.1:9222")
        page = browser.contexts[0].pages[0]
        
        try:
            with open('unrecognized_faces.csv', mode='a', newline='', encoding='utf-8') as file:
                writer = csv.writer(file)
                while True:
                    current_url = page.url
                    total_scanned += 1 
                    
                    found = False
                    page.wait_for_timeout(int(BASE_WAIT * 1000))
                    
                    max_attempts = int(MAX_WAIT_TIME / 0.25)
                    for _ in range(max_attempts): 
                        if any(el.is_visible() for el in page.get_by_text("available to add", exact=False).all()):
                            found = True
                            break
                        page.wait_for_timeout(250)

                    if found:
                        faces_found += 1
                        writer.writerow([current_url])
                        file.flush()
                        print(f"✅ Found: {current_url}")
                    else:
                        no_faces += 1
                        print(f"❌ Clean: {current_url}")

                    # ==========================================
                    # 🔄 Robust Navigation Strategy
                    # ==========================================
                    navigated = False
                    for attempt in range(3): 
                        page.keyboard.press("ArrowRight")
                        
                        try:
                            page.wait_for_function(f"window.location.href !== '{current_url}'", timeout=4000)
                            navigated = True
                            break 
                        except Exception:
                            print(f"⚠️ Browser is slow... Navigation attempt {attempt + 2} of 3")
                            page.wait_for_timeout(1000) 
                    
                    if not navigated:
                        print("\n--- Reached the end of the album (or browser is completely stuck) ---")
                        break
                        
        except KeyboardInterrupt:
            print("\n--- Scan stopped manually by user ---")

    # Stop the timer and calculate elapsed time
    end_time = time.time()
    elapsed_time = end_time - start_time
    
    minutes, seconds = divmod(int(elapsed_time), 60)
    hours, minutes = divmod(minutes, 60)
    
    if hours > 0:
        time_str = f"{hours}h {minutes}m {seconds}s"
    else:
        time_str = f"{minutes}m {seconds}s"

    # Print Final Report
    print("\n" + "="*40)
    print("📊 FINAL SCAN REPORT:")
    print("="*40)
    print(f"📷 Total photos scanned:      {total_scanned}")
    print(f"⚠️ Photos with faces found:   {faces_found}")
    print(f"✅ Clean photos (No faces):   {no_faces}")
    print(f"⏱️ Total time elapsed:        {time_str}")
    print("="*40 + "\n")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    run()

• In VS Code, click the Terminal menu at the top, then select New Terminal.
• A window will pop up at the bottom of VS Code. Make sure it says GooglePhotosScanner in the path.
  • pip install playwright
  • playwright install chromium
  • Open Chrome in Debug Mode (so the script can see it):
  • Windows: "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --remote-debugging-port=9222
  • Mac: /Applications/Google\ [Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\](http://Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google) Chrome --remote-debugging-port=9222
• Sign in to your google account, open Google photos
• This is important and this how is did it, In google photos search, typed Jan 2010 - Dec 2010, Open the 1st image (not in the most relevant section) then click on "i" to open the side info
• Make sure the only chrome opened is the with the debug mode, and its viewing the 1st image in your list with side info details is opened
• Go back to VS Code, Open new terminal while the 1st one still running and type: python3 scan.py
• You’ll get a CSV list of every single photo in your library that contains an unidentified face.

https://preview.redd.it/ras4rlf2pb2h1.png?width=2356&format=png&auto=webp&s=1f9173da9eb4697ab06e1926fa6bdcda3e3969c3

I added a "Base Wait" of 1 second. Why? Because we want to mimic human behavior. If you go too fast, Google will flag you. This pace is safe, reliable, and it saved me months of work.

Why this changes everything: Instead of staring at thousands of photos, I now have a simple list. I can tackle 5K - 10K faces a day without breaking my back. If you are struggling with a massive, unorganized library, don't keep searching for a feature that doesn't exist. Automate the discovery yourself.

Final word: If you are currently struggling with 10k, 50k, or 85k+ photos and you feel like the system is working against you, don't give up. The solution isn't in Google's settings; it’s in taking control of the browser yourself.

Troubleshooting: If you run into any permission issues, path errors, or the script isn't detecting the port—don't panic. Just ask an AI to help you with the traceback errors. It helped me iterate and fix every bottleneck I encountered.

When I open a photo on my Google Photos app the photo automatically darkens. I’ve looked at other threads on this and haven’t been any to do anything to fix it. I have an IPhone. Anyone fix this issue on an iPhone? Thanks

I have had my phone screen on, uploading my photos for a couple days already and it has synced like less than 5% of my photos.
Ive looked up old threads talking about slow upload speeds etc and tried really everything to help that I can.

Is it possible to upload from my pc and have the phone sync with google photos and recognise photos that already exist? or is it just going to double up on photos and not help at all?

Looking for alternatives to jsut keeping my phone, screen on, in google photos app for the next 2 weeks.

Hey everyone!

I recently uploaded some RAW files from my Panasonic Lumix S9 to Google Photos, and the previews look completely broken. Instead of showing the actual photo, Google Photos displays a full frame of pink/purple noise.

The weird thing is that the metadata seems to be read correctly.

The RAW files themselves don’t seem to be corrupted. They open normally in RAW-compatible software, so I’m guessing this is a Google Photos RAW decoding /preview issue rather than a camera or SD card problem.

Has anyone else with a Lumix S9, S5II, S5IIX, G9II, or other recent Panasonic cameras seen this happen in Google Photos?

I’m mainly wondering if this is a known issue with newer Panasonic .RW2 files, or if there’s any workaround besides uploading RAW+JPEG and using the JPEGs for previewing.

Just yesterday, I noticed that an entire album of over 200 photos I’d taken from a game had disappeared, they’re not on any of my accounts or any of my devices. I didn’t delete them myself, and no one else could have deleted them because no one else has access to my accounts. This also happened to dozens of other photos, before this I thought maybe I had deleted them myself, but now I’m sure they disappeared on their own. I don’t know what the problem is because they had been in the app for almost four years before this and everything was fine… So it’s my fault that I didn’t set up Auto-Upload, but it’s still very sad and I don’t know—maybe there’s still a way to get them back.. Is it possible to contact the support service directly? If so, where to write or to what email?

Hello and thanks for entering my post. So I have some personal videos such as gameplay (which includes licensed music/songs) it may vary but it could be over 50+ tracks in some videos or just 1,5 seconds on some videos.

I did receive very different answers from Gemini as "Yes it is perfect okay" or "No it is not okay"

But is it safe to upload these for personal use? As no sharing and just storing them.

Thanks for reading, have a great day! :D

So my google storage has been full for months and im even paying the subscription so my 100gb is full. I don't want to pay for the higher subscription cuz i think its just a toxic cycle and i keep having to delete a lot of my videos to get gmail working again each month. I have a lot of videos and i've deleted all the useless ones and storage is still full. How do i get more storage or what do i do about this. I would ideally like all my photos on my phone in chronological order and SSDs are quite expensive and scared of losing it. What's my best option?

Tech help please. Please help me figure it out so my 86 year old mother in law doesn't lose her last marble.

Samsung S20, Android 13, GooglePhotos not "sharing" to any apps for texting/emailing/what's app. ALREADY CLEARED APP CACHE. Yes, I know it's possible to download the image then share. Yes, I know she could open the app, search for the photo, and share it. But her brain doesn't work like that. She needs to be able to open "photos," tap the photo, tap "share" and route it.

Phone is up to date w/software. App also says it's up to date.
I know I can back up all her data to Google then try to fix it by factory resetting the phone but she's 86 and can't consent to something she doesn't understand. Basically, she wants a new phone but she can't afford one. There must be a fix. Thanks.
Thanks.

I lost my student account, since it got deleted. When I contacted the Admin, they told me that the account was automatically deleted since I stored too much in it (~200 GB). When I asked if there was any way I can get it back, they created a new account with the same gmail address. This new account does not have my old data. I really need my old data back, I have enough storage space on my hardisk to store all the ~200 GB. What can I do, please help me.

I now have a clearer picture on how this works, after doing a direct transfer from google takeout to a iCloud test account tied to my family storage. What I see from this test practice is the following

- HEIC files transfered from Google are HEIF after transfer, they are also different in sizes - this makes them re-upload to Google Photos as duplicates if Google Photos sync is not turned off

- Albums transfered are a lot more than the source, haven't seen through all names and so on, but seems like there are duplicates. only some of them contains pictures though, so seems like they are the "real ones"

- on the positive side, apple photos detects a lot of duplicates so far, that Google Photos haven't "said" anything about.

With these experiences in mind I have the following plan to do a proper migration:

situation today: my wifi and I share one google photos account for all our photos.

- Decide on a cutover date
- at cutover date, disable Google Photos sync on both our phones
- start Google Takeout transfer to iCloud after disabling Google Photos sync
- Use Google Photos as a read only source until transfer is complete (about a week)
- Start using iCloud/apple photos for 6 months, then do a decision on what to do long term.

If we don't like apple photos enough I will do manual upload of the last 6 months, delete iCloud Photos and then re-enable Google Photos sync.

One caveat with all of this is that we have had iCloud Photos running for 2-3 years on both our accounts, so takeout might create duplicates for these years. Haven't decided how I will do this, either delete everything in iCloud first, then start over again or just hope that apple photos duplicate detection is good enough to fix them all. a third option might be to add all photos in Google Photos to yearly albums and use them when transferring

I’m looking for a few people who have scanned family photos sitting in Google Photos under the wrong dates.

I had this problem with my own 8,000 family scans. They were all dumped into my Google Photos timeline on the days I scanned them, which made them basically unusable and difficult to browse with the rest of my photos.

I’ve been building Timeline Scan to solve that. The basic idea is:

• Upload scanned photos
• Tag your family members and their birthdates
• Have AI (Gemini) estimate the date of each photo 
• Update the EXIF/metadata
• Export them directly to Google Photos

I recently added direct Google Photos export, so I’m looking for people who actually have this problem and would be willing to test it with a real batch of scans.

This is my own project, hopefully this doesn’t feel like a launch post or a sales pitch. I’m mainly looking for feedback from people who care about making scanned photos usable inside Google Photos and if my project helps. From my own family photos, it created a chronological timeline that is easier to consume as it feels just like photos taken from my phone.

Comment here or DM me if you’re interested. Let me know roughly how many scanned photos you have. Since AI processing gets expensive at larger volumes, I may be able to offer either a full-library test or a smaller batch depending on the size.

Edit: I've currently hit the max number of photos for this phase of feedback. Thank you all for helping me out! ❤️

I've used Google Photos in the past for 5 years. Worked great. But I am not a big fan of the invasive AI features it has these days. Basically most of my videos are highlighted with "key moment" in the scrub bar, and I don't like the idea of AI going through my stuff.

So, I moved to iCloud and synced my whole library there. But here is the problem, while it is great, I own an iPhone, iPad and a Windows laptop. The Windows laptop works fine with iCloud for the most part but its still very restricted, and iCloud Takeout of the photos is a jumbled mess without any metadata.

Now I am reaching a point where I need to pay for the next month, and decide if I am going to stick with Google Photos or iCloud.

I do have backups on multiple HDDs and SSDs, so backup is not a problem. I just need an online cloud storage solution.

I want to open & edit a Snapseed photo from within Google Photos, which requires Google Photos to preserve the Snapseed edit stack data when opening Snapseed on the file.

The current share & "edit in Snapseed" workflows flatten prior Snapseed edits and discard the editable stack. (The edits are stored as metadata within the edited JPG file, and that metadata is discarded upon either edit or share.)

I believe this is a request for the Google Photos team but I'm mentioning here to start a conversation.

I'm using updated versions of both apps, and the latest version of Android available for a Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Exact workflow:
- edit photo in Snapseed
- save
- reopen from Google Photos, using either "edit in Snapseed", or "share"
- stack/history lost

Hey guy I have a question sorry recently. I went to my Google photo app and I deleted 35 gb of of photos that are already stored in the lock folders for me. I thought they are going to the trash but suddenly I remembered that I didn't pay the subscription so any deletion that happens it happens permanently so is there any way to contact Google team and recover those photos

I accidentally clicked free up space a while a go on my phone, and a lot of my photos deleted from my gallery. Majority of them are backed up, but some photos have just been permanently deleted, which I'm assuming has been done by Google photos. Is this even possible, and could these files just be hiding somewhere?

Basically what the title says. I'm not using Google Photos to backup my photos but I would like to try out the Google photobook service. Is there any way to order these without saving the photos to my Google account/cloud?