r/googlephotos

I see this a lot but thought I'd ask. I got falsely flagged for CSAM today, I submitted an appeal but haven't heard back, but it hasn't been too long. Obviously it being false you can gather I didn't have anything like that, I was downloading porn admittedly, but everyone was of age & the place is against it, which ofc doesn't mean bad apples won't still post, but to my knowledge none was posted, let alone included in what I downloaded. I have super bad anxiety so my mind's going to the worst places. What if they for some reason deny my appeal. Will I go to jail? Will the police show up soon ? This has never happened so idk if I'm catastrophizing or if these are reasonable fears. It's such a serious accusation I'm shaking & sick to my stomach.

I read the Todd A. Spodek article & now I'm more anxious, will I be looking over my shoulder for months to years in fear of agents over something that didn't happen?

I have a lot of artistic projects in my google photos, organized into various folders. (theme boards for book ideas, stuff like that.) I originally had them on Pinterest but Pinterest is so flooded with ads and gross AI that I thought I'd just save them to google photos, but now I'm worried about my ideas being stolen and given to someone if they used an AI prompt like ChatGPT. I'm very protective of my stuff and my ideas, I hate art theft. I just want to make sure my stuff is safe. I haven't found a lot of information pertaining to my scenario, so I wanted to ask here. I'm a very digital person but this whole age of AI and tech companies being greedy ​is exhausting 🫩

How do I share a photo with a friend? I don't have a share button.

Edit to say I found the answer: The three dots in a triangle means share. I never knew that. But after you click that, you still must only send the pix to an address with a gmail address. It was difficult figuring that out. Nobody tells you (me). Thanks for all the answers anyway.

Before anyone suggests the usual things like checking the Trash, Archive, Locked Folder, switching accounts, checking the browser, Gallery Trash, reinstalling the app, or signing out and back in... I have already done all of that. I have literally tried everything I could find online. There isn't a single obvious troubleshooting step left that I haven't already tried.

Also, please don't tell me that "Free up space deletes photos from your phone." I already know that. That was the entire point.

My phone storage was completely full. I had around 4,000 photos and videos, and my phone had become almost unusable because of the lack of storage. I didn't want to keep those files on my phone forever. That's exactly why I trusted Google Photos.

I thought, "Google is one of the biggest technology companies in the world. Google Photos is literally designed to back up your memories so you can safely remove them from your phone afterward."

So I gave Google Photos permission to back up my gallery.

The backup took several days because I was using mobile data. During that time, Google Photos itself kept sending me notifications saying that a certain number of photos had been backed up and asking if I wanted to "Free up space."

I didn't blindly press the button.

Every single time, I read the message carefully. It clearly said that those photos had already been backed up safely to Google Photos and could be downloaded again anytime in the future. Only after reading that did I press "Free up space."

I used that feature because I thought it would save me from manually opening my gallery and deleting thousands of photos one by one. That's literally what the feature is supposed to do.

Instead, after using it, I discovered that not only were the photos removed from my phone, more than half of them are missing from Google Photos as well.

Entire months are almost gone.

For example, if I originally had around 100 photos in a month, Google Photos now only shows one or two. Most of my camera photos and photos I received through WhatsApp and Instagram have disappeared. Ironically, most screenshots are still there.

I never manually deleted anything from Google Photos.

I trusted Google's own backup process and used Google's own "Free up space" feature exactly as it instructed me to.

Then I contacted Google Support.

They asked me multiple questions, asked which account I used, whether I used Google Photos or Google One, asked for screenshots, and I answered everything because I genuinely believed they were investigating my issue.

After several days, their final reply was simply that they don't handle Google Photos, only Google Drive.

That honestly left me even more confused.

If they couldn't investigate Google Photos in the first place, why wasn't I told that in the first reply? Why ask me for all that information and give me hope that someone was looking into my case?

Then they told me to ask in the public forums.

This makes me wonder... Google Photos is one of Google's biggest services. Millions of people trust it with their most valuable memories. Is there really no dedicated Google Photos support team that can investigate account-specific issues?

At this point, I'm not looking for generic troubleshooting tips anymore. I've already spent days trying every suggestion I could find and contacting Google themselves.

If anyone has a real solution, or has actually recovered photos after something like this happened, please tell me. These weren't just files. They were years of memories that I can never recreate, and I'm honestly heartbroken.

So I have kept the upload quality at "High quality" still the uploaded photos size is less than a Mb .. i get it could be a compressed photo but when I'm downloading the photo on my desktop it's still under one Mb. Any solution to that..

I use oneplus 13 as of now.

iPhone with google photos backup turned on. I would use apples “photo” app to Delete the photo, not Google’s photo app.

Auto delete is turned off.

Additional question, is it possible to back up two separate phones photo to Google Photos?

Just a general question. I just got my wife a new iPhone (17e). All she needs is just the basic phone. So, I have Google Photos on my phone, PC, and Laptop. If I put Google Photo on my wife's phone and log in as me (I have 81,878 photos) will it deplete all of her memory on the phone? She has the basic 256gb.

Hi I have a Google Pixel 1 to take advantage of the unlimited Google Photos storage, but I’m a little overwhelmed trying to figure out the best way to go about this. I already have around 500GB of photos and videos in Google Photos that were uploaded from my iPhone over the years. What’s the most efficient way to get all of that uploaded through the Pixel so it counts toward the unlimited storage instead?

I just switched from the pixel to an iPhone and I plan on continuing to use Google Photos with the iPhone. I can’t set a wallpaper straight from the app, but I can’t find a way to download the photos locally. I know I was able to do it on my iPad previously, is there a way I can do it on the iPhone?

In October 2025, Google disabled my Google account (Gmail, Drive, Photos — everything) after its automated systems flagged a photo of my infant son being bathed by his grandmother. No nudity beyond a baby in a bath. Nothing that resembles abuse material by any reasonable standard.

Google allows two appeals for this type of violation. I submitted both. Both were denied with zero explanation and no human contact — just a form rejection.

What's gone: 10+ years of Gmail and Drive, and every photo/video in Google Photos, including the only surviving photos and videos of my father, grandmother, and a close friend — all of whom passed away in the last three years — plus the delivery-room video of my son being born. None of it exists anywhere else.

I'm not disputing Google's right to remove content it believes violates policy — I've said explicitly, in writing, that they can delete the specific image in question. What I can't get anyone to explain is why an entire decade of unrelated, lawful family data has to be permanently destroyed along with it, with no human ever reviewing the actual context.

This isn't a rare case — it's a documented pattern (the NYT covered nearly identical cases in 2022, "Mark" and "Cassio," where police cleared both fathers and Google still refused to reinstate). I've gone through every standard channel: appeals, attorney demand letter in progress, EFF, journalist outreach. Posting here in case anyone has actually gotten a case like this resolved, or knows someone at Google who might be able to look at it.

Happy to answer questions or share documentation.

I’ve seen the UI of the iPhone Google photos has changed where you can’t select “delete from device only”

How can I delete my iPhone photos only and not Google photos to take the photo backups away?

So this is very strange, I've been using Google gallery for 3 years now with 0 problems, now my tablet is warning me that the app is infected when i open it? What does that mean? Is anyone dealing with this issue? I'm really worried that all this could mean my tablet is in danger of hacking or something?

I've seen the import photos--> google drive icon on google photos (web based), but the folder in my personal gdrive that contains the folder has close to 12,000 files (all of which are a file format supported in google photos) and is around 20gb total.

• I just want to be able to make this transfer in a single drag & drop(?) move/import.
• I don't want to keep importing batch by batch

is there a "select all" feature/button that im not aware of in google photos (web browser) when making an import from google drive?

any help appreciated. thanks

**fyi, The folder in my google drive that I want to import is a folder of photos that came from my onedrive/ it is NOT the google photos backup that was once stored in google drive.

any insight appreciated. thank you

I've noticed lately on the find x9 Pro that when I take a photo in 50mp, google photos fails to back it up properly.

If google photos is not open in the background then when the photo is taken it does its processing up to 50MP then sits waiting till google photos opens then it will upload at the corret resolution and quality.

HOWEVER:

If google photos has recently been opened it will back up the image before the 50MP processig has been completed. resulting in a blury unprocessed 12.6MP image.

if i look at the second photo in the default oppo gallery it shows correctly at 50mp with the same quality as the first image. This google photos is backing up before processing is complete.

Attached are images showing the meta data of 2 photos taken back to back, one before opening google photos and one after opening google photos.

https://preview.redd.it/g3da3ykdbsah1.png?width=341&format=png&auto=webp&s=d169d6f523cf48dc0fb3abdd6a44de6fd0ba392d

https://preview.redd.it/t0xaukldbsah1.png?width=342&format=png&auto=webp&s=14a99692b07a17aa6a42c376e29d1756bb7b3a90

https://preview.redd.it/abih0lldbsah1.png?width=1318&format=png&auto=webp&s=1d8533c06c2c56b75d13474402552f4fbbef2424

https://preview.redd.it/8975mlldbsah1.png?width=633&format=png&auto=webp&s=5cad5239e352fc99de97aa3c0a1c82bc16ca2529