I backup my photos to Google Photos. Recently I've sorted through all of my photos in the Apple Photos app and deleted about 3200 photos but they are not deleting from my Google Photos. Is there a way to have the deleted photos sync or do I need to do a complete wipe and rebuild of the Google Photos?
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Delete photo in Apple Photos App, stays in Google Photos?
- Thread starter Dreamliner330
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Just guessing here, as I don't use Google Photos for anything. That's a lot of photos to delete, and it may take a good amount of time to sync every one of those 3200 changes. Is there an option in Google Photos to "sync now" or anything like that you can try if you still don't see it syncing after a while?
Also, have you actually permanently deleted those photos by going to the "Recently Deleted" album and clearing those out?
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Google Photos don't "sync" with iPhones. It just copies those photos into Google Photos in the cloud. You have to delete those photos yourself directly from Google Photos manually.
Note the wordings. "Back up photos from your Mac." Google didn't say sync, just back up. Forget the name of the app.
And for the iOS Google Photos app, it only backup the photos, not sync. The only thing it syncs is the favorites (eg. when you favorite a photo in iOS Gallery, the metadata will also copy the favorite tag to Google Photos). That's about it. iOS has limitations that doesn't allow Google Photos to do full syncing.
The only way to avoid this in the future is to fully commit to use solely Google Photos app as the gallery app. When you delete a photo from Google Photos, it will confirm if you want to delete the original from the iPhone's gallery as well.
Notice for mobile it doesn’t say ‘automatically backup photos.’
When I open the app it says preparing backup.
Seems quite odd to name an app Backup and Sync that can't do one of those things. I guess it may sync other types of documents? But why wouldn't it be able to sync photos too? Strange.
Anyway, I keep forgetting the OP is doing this from his iPhone, not his Mac, so I guess it's irrelevant anyway. Sorry!
The name is not false when we talk about Google Drive on the Mac. Syncing works just fine for regular files on Google Drive and folders on mac's drive. The backup and sync intention is to be an applet for Google Drive.
Why wouldn't it sync Apple photos? That's an Apple problem. Apple Photos keep all its photos inside its own database library with its own thing such as optimized storage stuff instead of a plain folder-based system. Probably too complicated to allow 3rd parties full access.
So it would appear the best option for the OP is to use iCloud to backup AND sync photos, which of course isn't free if they require more than the included 5GB, but may be well worth it for them to upgrade.
Well, if the goal is seamlessness, then yes, using iCloud Photos is the way to go for iPhones.
When I was looking at my Google Drive in Chrome I noticed some really old photos from a previous device. I'll probably go through those and then delete everything from Google Photos and either rebuild or switch to iCloud.
I am trying to avoid monthly fees. So far I've resisted nearly all of them.
I am trying to avoid monthly fees. So far I've resisted nearly all of them.
Note that Google Photos no longer syncs with Google Drive, so you will still need to check Google Photos to see if those photos are still there.
As for fees, it's up to you to value your time and convenience. I personally use OneDrive since I already paid for it as part of Office 365. If you use iPhone, I believe the 99c a month for 50GB tier is quite inexpensive to get that convenience.
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