8 ms·

How do I permanently disable random Google Photos popup to backup photos? (2024)

236 points by dt3ft 2mo ago

dt3ft 2mo ago
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.
- nom 2mo ago
  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.
  - 0sdi 2mo ago
    storing important files with google is risky business anyway. you could lose them for any other stupid reason, and im sure there is nothing you can do but blame yourself for trusting them.
  - globular-toast 2mo ago
    Gmail uses the same storage space for a few years now. Fill it up and you can't receive emails any more.
    - whynou2f 2mo ago
      Even without Photos plenty of users complain in Gmail forums and subreddits - wtf gmail is full At some point people should take self responsibility for their accounts.
  - whynou2f 2mo ago
    Eventually all those valuable pics they take will be lost if GP is disabled and phone is lost or screen damaged. 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
    - tdeck 2mo ago
      I've said "no" to this popup at least 100 times. Under what notion of obtaining consent would it be considered acceptable to ask me again the 101st time?
      - whynou2f 2mo ago
        I said no once. Never it asked. My guess is this happens to overzealous privacy people that often clean cache etc. If you are that ana l then why not press and hold app. Disable. Or even leave Google and install something like lineageOS
        tdeck 2mo ago
        I've never once cleared the cache on this app, and you can trivially find hundreds of other people complaining about this same behavior. Why make such an assumption and write it in such an insulting style?
    - gertop 2mo ago
      I hate Google and their dark patterns as much as the next guy but I agree: Having the pop-up once or twice or even three times is reasonable. A lot of people value the backup more than their privacy. But after saying no three times, it really ought to leave the user alone...
      - MrMember 2mo ago
        It's a ubiquitous dark pattern. Instead of having a "Yes" or "No" option it's now "Yes" or "Ask Me Later."
  - JimDabell 2mo ago
    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.
    - bigbuppo 2mo ago
      Mobster tactics from google. Nice. Just remember that Google always kills its products, and they are an advertising company. I'm joking, I hope, but Google ain't what it used to be.
      - BLKNSLVR 2mo ago
        Which part was meant to be a joke?
        animuchan 2mo ago
        I guess the hopeful one, "Google always kills its products", suggesting that the bad product in this thread is also doomed. I hold this same hope, almost entirely unironically, about so many things.
    - Walf 2mo ago
      Careful, don't cloud deletions sync, i.e. remove the previously offline-only files from your devices?
    - dwedge 2mo ago
      This was even more annoying when they started including whatsapp backups in your quota and sent a load of people over quota. And as far as I know there's no alternative for whatsapp backups apart from plugging in a USB cable and hoping Whatsapp don't change the method between now and when you need to restore it
      - 2mo ago
  - gsky 2mo ago
    This is true. it happened to a lot of people that i know
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- BLKNSLVR 2mo ago
  I like this example of brigading
novia 2mo ago
The answer in the thread (which is quite hard to find) is to use the Google Photos app without an account. The app has some very nice features that are locked behind account access though.
- cube00 2mo ago
  I didn't realise you could do this but it's worth a try, it'll probably just change to nagging you to sign in instead now. It's under your profile icon in the top right. https://support.google.com/photos/thread/256212140?hl=en&msgid=318602474 https://support.google.com/photos/thread/256212140?hl=en&msg...
rootsudo 2mo ago
I wonder why google locked it..
- 0sdi 2mo ago
  because it's a feature, not a bug. wontfix
netsharc 2mo ago
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
- Mistletoe 2mo ago
  I love you.
- VladVladikoff 2mo ago
  Feeding all your photos into their AI models for free, really showed them bud!
speedstyle 2mo ago
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 [0] https://ente.com https://ente.com
- distances 2mo ago
  And I use Google's own Gallery app instead of Photos. Like for others, the backup notification is what renders Photos unusable for me. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.photosgo https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
nubinetwork 2mo ago
One benefit of having a Samsung, you can uninstall google photos and still be able to use your camera.
- Markoff 2mo ago
  you can do that on any modern Android phone, just install Shizuku + Canta and "uninstall" whatever Google app you don't like
- olyjohn 2mo ago
  Benefit of having a Pixel, you can install Graphene OS and get rid of all of the BS and not have a second layer of Samsung's shit all over it.
  - DANmode 2mo ago
    The amount they make Android insecure can not be overstated.
    - edoceo 2mo ago
      Which one is the "they"?
      - Joel_Mckay 2mo ago
        Probably meant Alphabet and Facebook ad marketing telemetry service embedding. =3
      - DANmode 2mo ago
        Samsung. Graphene is outstanding. Far and away best in class.
    - Joel_Mckay 2mo ago
      Currently there is a guy in court for giving a duress-password to border guards. From nuisance to a real problem in 30 seconds. =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2rokxux5cU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2rokxux5cU
onel 2mo ago
On web I use an adblocker to block annoying google popups, including the Gemini one in gmail. Immich is an amazing alternative. People should give it a chance. One click install: https://malmo.network/store/immich https://malmo.network/store/immich
hiisukun 2mo ago
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. [1] https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/
- therein 2mo ago
  You know what I wish I could ditch but cannot due to their firm grip on it, Google Wallet. Every other time I open it, it shows a pop-up asking "Can we use your payment data to show you more relevant ads?" which is annoying but what's more aggravating is the choices: "Yes", "Remind me Later".
  - andrepd 2mo ago
    I mean, is it that much of a hassle to carry a debit card with you?
    - x______________ 2mo ago
      > I mean, is it that much of a hassle to carry a debit card with you? In order to be exposed to targeted advertising? That seems excessive for the end goals (not mentioning the fact that you cannot opt out).
EtienneDeLyon 2mo ago
[dead]
richardfey 2mo ago
For pixel owners: the Google photos app cannot be uninstalled, but you can disable it using adb.
- andrepd 2mo ago
  The only reason to buy a pixel (new or refurbished) is to run Graphene or Lineage anyway :)
  - mmwelt 2mo ago
    There are reasons to remain on Google Android for now, though. For example, QuickShare compatibility with AirDrop[1,2], or compatibility with certain banking apps[3]. [1] https://www.android.com/quick-share/with-iphone/ https://www.android.com/quick-share/with-iphone/ [2] https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/6550 https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/6550 [3] https://grapheneos.org/usage#banking-apps https://grapheneos.org/usage#banking-apps
jakegmaths 2mo ago
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.
- dogman1050 2mo ago
  This is exactly why I don't use it and have it disabled. The arrogance of that message is stunning. I use Aves and it works just fine.
pmontra 2mo ago
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. [1] https://github.com/deckerst/aves https://github.com/deckerst/aves
darkwater 2mo ago
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!
- darkstar_16 2mo ago
  How much data do you have ? Isn't B2 expensive at certain size ?
  - darkwater 2mo ago
    <goes to check notes...> I have 850GB in B2 across all the backups I store there and I pay around 7$ a month. Any better price from any underdog provider? I'm definetely not going to pay 10EUR/month for Google One's 2TB. I still need to check if I can optimize B2 costs by using different tiers (I mean, these are mainly disaster recovery backups so I dont care about fast copy times)
  - michaelt 2mo ago
    For photos, it's kinda fine? You can store 2TB for $14 per month; to fill that with photos you'd have to shoot 0.5GB/day for 10 years. You can spend less - Google Drive and iCloud will offer 2TB for $10/month - but they don't really want power users who use their whole quota, so they don't make things like command line / API access easy. Likewise Backblaze has an 'unlimited' backup option - but it's desktop mac-and-windows only, and it's selective about what it backs up - only 'user generated' files.
    - ValentineC 2mo ago
      > You can spend less - Google Drive and iCloud will offer 2TB for $10/month - but they don't really want power users who use their whole quota, so they don't make things like command line / API access easy. rclone works very, very well with Google Drive: https://rclone.org/drive/ https://rclone.org/drive/
lowleveldesign 2mo ago
One of the answers points the right steps to disable the Google account (and the annoying popup) in the Photos app: - click on the account icon - choose switch account and pick use this application without an account
- TekMol 2mo ago
  Just tried that. Unfortunately, it seems to completely mess up the interface? I couldn't even see all photos anymore. Even though I do not use backup at all. So it is not possible that those photos are in the cloud or something.
  - gertop 2mo ago
    Force close the app and clear the cache, your photos will come back. Or clear data completely, then open the app "for the first time" and immediately log out. It'll work, but as you've discovered, google made sure that it isn't the happy path. Also no search (not even by file name), no albums, some editing functions won't work (even though they're local), and a few more annoyances. but also no more backup prompt...
    - TekMol 2mo ago
      Oh, that looks good! I closed the app, stopped it and cleared the cache. Then restarted it. The UI is surprisingly sane now. My first impression is that it is much better than before. Everything is neatly layed out in a series of albums, for each the latest images are shown and I can click on the album name and it displays them all. So I do see my albums. Those seem to be just directories in /Pictures/ which it seems I can edit with the files app? Am I missing out on anything this way? I don't need search. All the usualy edit functions like cropping, adjusting colors etc also seem to still be there.
    - wila 2mo ago
      Is google lens still available? That's perhaps the only cloud feature I sometimes use, in order to translate Chinese text to English or similar. Also is it possible to undo (in case there's something I don't like?) Is it just a matter of adding the app back to your account?
jzer0cool 2mo ago
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?
- anon48293 2mo ago
  Is this to select them, or make stickers out of them?
- trelbutate 2mo ago
  That runs locally as far as I know. I have backup turned off and I can still search for simple things in the photos (like "dog"), but nothing more complex than that. Only when you enable the backup and it gets uploaded to the cloud do they run more advanced models on it.
BatteryMountain 2mo ago
In short, uninstall google photos. It has a bunch of other undesirable behaviours, the prompts are just one irritation.
xyst 2mo ago
solution: self host immich
ta8903 2mo ago
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.
- ura_yukimitsu 2mo ago
  Using the website means the photos are backed up in the cloud which is precisely what they don't want. And in the first place, you shouldn't have to use an ad blocker to turn off something that you should be able to turn off with a setting. Also huge disagree on websites having better UX than native apps; it may be true more often on PC, and it may also be true on mobile for some apps that are particularly bad, but otherwise I observe the exact opposite of what you're saying.
Steve16384 2mo ago
This is another argument that we need more phone OS options, not just Android and iPhone. (Graphene isn't really a proper option yet).
phrotoma 2mo ago
I don't get it. I'm also a paying customer and I have never seen this prompt. My google photos album goes back to 2006.
dotdi 2mo ago
Another +1 for migrating to Immich. 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.
- cube00 2mo ago
  I personally can't trust OneDrive to handle my irreplaceable data, switching on silently, takes your data if you try and turn it off because it swapped out your files for "online only" stubs, randomly files just end up not coming back down silently, sync fails silently. Plenty of horror stories out there, eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37408794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37408794 If you could run OneDrive with debug level logging I can only imagine the flood of errors they must be ignoring. It also never takes "no" for an answer: https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-11/331890/hell-freezes-over-if-only-slightly https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-11/331890/hell-free...
Brajeshwar 2mo ago
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). https://brajeshwar.com/2021/how-to-delete-all-photos-and-get-off-google-photos/ https://brajeshwar.com/2021/how-to-delete-all-photos-and-get...
functionmouse 2mo ago
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.
3Sophons 2mo ago
Here is a open source OS to allow you to self host immich with 1 click https://www.olares.com/docs/use-cases/immich https://www.olares.com/docs/use-cases/immich
rmellow 2mo ago
Does Big Tech understand consent? [ ] Yes [ ] Ask me again later
- WarmWash 2mo ago
  The actual problem is that all this stuff is "free" and after many years of this, expected to be "free".
- xg15 2mo ago
  They're the enlightened few! Your consent is assumed for your own good!
afarah1 2mo ago
Worth the shout-out to the open source NetGuard app which allows you to block internet access for select apps without root, using Android's always-on VPN feature as a firewall. This is useful to prevent this and any other apps from talking to the network in a way external to the app itself.
- rationalist 2mo ago
  Then you can't use an actual VPN.
  - afarah1 2mo ago
    Correct, but there are no better non-root alternatives as far as I know. Would love to be proved wrong. There are some workarounds to use NetGuard with a VPN based on a work profile or something, but I haven't personally tried them and cannot attest to them working.
cube00 2mo ago
Plastering a "Back up now" pill over the top of every photo (not a header, I mean it actually covers the photo) was always a favourite of mine. Example (doesn't show it covering the photo but view a portrait photo and you'll see it): https://media.zenfs.com/en/android_police_756/2ba414b46f97320c60a40e6ba34f5c8c https://media.zenfs.com/en/android_police_756/2ba414b46f9732...
- Zopieux 2mo ago
  Bad take. This is exactly how I use non-auto-backup Photos: 99% of my shitty smartphone pictures are local only, and I don't care to lose them. Occasionally though, I want to share or save a photo. Having this (small) button is quite convenient.
  - chownie 1mo ago
    If it's only occasional use then you're actually using the button sometimes and having it cover a chunk of every single picture you look at, all the time. It can go in a sub-menu.
thrownaway561 2mo ago
Alternatives to Google Photos and self hosting: If you pay for an Amazon Prime account, Amazon Photos is included. You get unlimited photos storage If you pay for a M365 license, you get 1TB of photo space on OneDrive I get these aren't free, however if you are already paying for a service which give you photo storage, why pay Google. Also, let's face it, most people have an Amazon Prime account or pay for a M365 account to use Office.
michal_kurowski 2mo ago
[dead]
vertnerd 2mo ago
We (wife and I) de-googled ourselves about a year and a half ago, moving half a TB of photos to Ente and canceling our paid Google subscription (while still keeping our gmail addresses). We set up our (Android) phones to back up photos to Ente and everything was lovely. Then I started noticing my wife's Google Photos storage use growing again. Somehow her phone had been switched to backing up on Google again. I turned it off. Then it happened again. And again. She couldn't explain how it happened, but I suspected she was the victim of a scary prompt warning that her photos weren't getting backed up. This wasn't happening to me because I had switched my phone to LineageOS, but hers was still a stock Pixel with Android. Lately, I have run across a different example of Google locking in its services. As part of our process of leaving Google, we moved our email, contacts and calendars to mailbox.org. I set up her phone's calendar app to use the new server but to my dismay every new appointment was defaulting to use the Google calendar service! I switched her to the Etar calendar app (which is the default app on LineageOS), disabled the default calendar, and asked her to use Etar instead. Everything was great until I began to notice that her new appointments were showing up on Google again! I look at her phone and see that Etar is completely gone and the only calendar app available is the default Android one. This calendar fiasco only just revealed itself the other day, so I haven't had enough time to figure out how or when it happened but it feels like it might be the same Google Photos tactic of sucking people back into Google.
- OptionOfT 2mo ago
  My work uses Google. Many websites now have a popup 'sign-in with Google' to keep you using their ecosystem.
  - throwuxiytayq 2mo ago
    It's not the websites. Your browser has that popup.
    - accountofthaha 2mo ago
      No. It's the websites.
jonathanlydall 2mo ago
Probably had a dialog like this: Do you want to do <x>? - Yes - Maybe later Missing the "no, never" option. Also, those of us who don't use Chrome have to periodically put up with the "It's better in Chrome/The Google App!" popups on all their properties (even when using a Chromium based browser), to make matters worse the popover has the "yes, let's get Google/Chrome" option as a blue button with the "maybe later" having a transparent background meaning if you absent mindedly tap the "natural" option you're annoyingly disrupted even further.
- aqfamnzc 2mo ago
  I honestly think I've been trained to ignore the "natural" button across all computer/phone usage because of how common this dark pattern is. Over the years it's switched my brain to first look for the greyed-out text, haha.
merryocha 2mo ago
I personally use Fossify Gallery to browse my photos and I just manually back up my photos from time to time by plugging my phone into my PC and copying the entire folder into an Archive folder which I keep organized by year and back up in multiple places. It's an oldschool solution to the problem but it works great for me.
- defrim 2mo ago
  fossify gallery is great, but any idea how to only view videos? while there are sections for favorites, screenshots, and others, I don't see any for videos
yipinwong 2mo ago
Not been a proponent of OSS, but started using more of them hosted in my private VPS because of subtle/explit dark patterns in big company services. Things are easier to host now, and big companies are now good for infrastructures. We can simply create and use bespoke services ourselves thanks to AIs
protimewaster 2mo ago
I use Google Photos on GrapheneOS, and Google Photos is blocked from network access (via the network permission exposed on GOS). That must prevent this popup from occurring, because I've never seen it.
daemin 2mo ago
Is it actually a backup though or only a cloud sync? Given how the other major provider behaves I have to assume that it's a cloud sync, not a backup, and that your photos will no longer be yours but instead stored on someone else's computer.
Tommix11 2mo ago
I recently started using fossify's photos app to get away from this popup annoyance! The app SO DESPERATELY wants to backup my photos that the app is no longer usable.
BurnGpuBurn 2mo ago
Another day, another enshittification of a Microsoft product. Nothing new here.
xg15 2mo ago
I recently canceled my Google One subscription. You can cancel any time, but Google WILL make sure you're feeling the withdrawal symptoms fast. Because without the subscription I had overstretched my storage space, several Google apps went full red-alert-and-howling-klaxons, plastering their UI with warnings about my data's impending doom, should I not solve the storage problem quickly or resume the subscription. The most obnoxious was Google Photos: It showed a red warning message on 1/3 of the screen space and put a red "no cloud backup" marker on every single thumbnail in the gallery. All that even though cloud backup was turned OFF. None of those photos was supposed to be backed up anyway. The app will let you turn off the backup any time, but for unfathomable reasons, it will still get angry if you don't keep enough storage space reserved so you could "hypothetically" turn it back on...
panny 2mo ago
My goal is to move to LineageOS by the end of the month since Google is being such an asshole about "sideloading" (installing) applications. Losing this antifeature will be a nice bonus.
ksudb 2mo ago
[dead]
vrighter 2mo ago
you disable it and install some other sane app that doesn't try to trick you into enabling google drive every other day
kooi 2mo ago
Immich + tailscale is great. Setup a little DNS server and now your computer can go to your photos.<lastname>.It's great. Setting up backups: Ja. Just setup rsync between a couple computers, good to go.

236 points by dt3ft 2mo ago

dt3ft 2mo ago

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.

nom 2mo ago
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.
- 0sdi 2mo ago
  storing important files with google is risky business anyway. you could lose them for any other stupid reason, and im sure there is nothing you can do but blame yourself for trusting them.
- globular-toast 2mo ago
  Gmail uses the same storage space for a few years now. Fill it up and you can't receive emails any more.
  - whynou2f 2mo ago
    Even without Photos plenty of users complain in Gmail forums and subreddits - wtf gmail is full At some point people should take self responsibility for their accounts.
- whynou2f 2mo ago
  Eventually all those valuable pics they take will be lost if GP is disabled and phone is lost or screen damaged. 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
  - tdeck 2mo ago
    I've said "no" to this popup at least 100 times. Under what notion of obtaining consent would it be considered acceptable to ask me again the 101st time?
    - whynou2f 2mo ago
      I said no once. Never it asked. My guess is this happens to overzealous privacy people that often clean cache etc. If you are that ana l then why not press and hold app. Disable. Or even leave Google and install something like lineageOS
      - tdeck 2mo ago
        I've never once cleared the cache on this app, and you can trivially find hundreds of other people complaining about this same behavior. Why make such an assumption and write it in such an insulting style?
  - gertop 2mo ago
    I hate Google and their dark patterns as much as the next guy but I agree: Having the pop-up once or twice or even three times is reasonable. A lot of people value the backup more than their privacy. But after saying no three times, it really ought to leave the user alone...
    - MrMember 2mo ago
      It's a ubiquitous dark pattern. Instead of having a "Yes" or "No" option it's now "Yes" or "Ask Me Later."
- JimDabell 2mo ago
  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.
  - bigbuppo 2mo ago
    Mobster tactics from google. Nice. Just remember that Google always kills its products, and they are an advertising company. I'm joking, I hope, but Google ain't what it used to be.
    - BLKNSLVR 2mo ago
      Which part was meant to be a joke?
      - animuchan 2mo ago
        I guess the hopeful one, "Google always kills its products", suggesting that the bad product in this thread is also doomed. I hold this same hope, almost entirely unironically, about so many things.
  - Walf 2mo ago
    Careful, don't cloud deletions sync, i.e. remove the previously offline-only files from your devices?
  - dwedge 2mo ago
    This was even more annoying when they started including whatsapp backups in your quota and sent a load of people over quota. And as far as I know there's no alternative for whatsapp backups apart from plugging in a USB cable and hoping Whatsapp don't change the method between now and when you need to restore it
    - 2mo ago
- gsky 2mo ago
  This is true. it happened to a lot of people that i know
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
BLKNSLVR 2mo ago
I like this example of brigading

novia 2mo ago

The answer in the thread (which is quite hard to find) is to use the Google Photos app without an account. The app has some very nice features that are locked behind account access though.

cube00 2mo ago
I didn't realise you could do this but it's worth a try, it'll probably just change to nagging you to sign in instead now. It's under your profile icon in the top right. https://support.google.com/photos/thread/256212140?hl=en&msgid=318602474 https://support.google.com/photos/thread/256212140?hl=en&msg...

rootsudo 2mo ago

I wonder why google locked it..

0sdi 2mo ago
because it's a feature, not a bug. wontfix

netsharc 2mo ago

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

Mistletoe 2mo ago
I love you.
VladVladikoff 2mo ago
Feeding all your photos into their AI models for free, really showed them bud!

speedstyle 2mo ago

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 [0] https://ente.com https://ente.com

distances 2mo ago
And I use Google's own Gallery app instead of Photos. Like for others, the backup notification is what renders Photos unusable for me. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.photosgo https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

nubinetwork 2mo ago

One benefit of having a Samsung, you can uninstall google photos and still be able to use your camera.

Markoff 2mo ago
you can do that on any modern Android phone, just install Shizuku + Canta and "uninstall" whatever Google app you don't like
olyjohn 2mo ago
Benefit of having a Pixel, you can install Graphene OS and get rid of all of the BS and not have a second layer of Samsung's shit all over it.
- DANmode 2mo ago
  The amount they make Android insecure can not be overstated.
  - edoceo 2mo ago
    Which one is the "they"?
    - Joel_Mckay 2mo ago
      Probably meant Alphabet and Facebook ad marketing telemetry service embedding. =3
    - DANmode 2mo ago
      Samsung. Graphene is outstanding. Far and away best in class.
  - Joel_Mckay 2mo ago
    Currently there is a guy in court for giving a duress-password to border guards. From nuisance to a real problem in 30 seconds. =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2rokxux5cU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2rokxux5cU

onel 2mo ago

On web I use an adblocker to block annoying google popups, including the Gemini one in gmail. Immich is an amazing alternative. People should give it a chance. One click install: https://malmo.network/store/immich https://malmo.network/store/immich

hiisukun 2mo ago

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. [1] https://immich.app/ https://immich.app/

therein 2mo ago
You know what I wish I could ditch but cannot due to their firm grip on it, Google Wallet. Every other time I open it, it shows a pop-up asking "Can we use your payment data to show you more relevant ads?" which is annoying but what's more aggravating is the choices: "Yes", "Remind me Later".
- andrepd 2mo ago
  I mean, is it that much of a hassle to carry a debit card with you?
  - x______________ 2mo ago
    > I mean, is it that much of a hassle to carry a debit card with you? In order to be exposed to targeted advertising? That seems excessive for the end goals (not mentioning the fact that you cannot opt out).

EtienneDeLyon 2mo ago

[dead]

richardfey 2mo ago

For pixel owners: the Google photos app cannot be uninstalled, but you can disable it using adb.

andrepd 2mo ago
The only reason to buy a pixel (new or refurbished) is to run Graphene or Lineage anyway :)
- mmwelt 2mo ago
  There are reasons to remain on Google Android for now, though. For example, QuickShare compatibility with AirDrop[1,2], or compatibility with certain banking apps[3]. [1] https://www.android.com/quick-share/with-iphone/ https://www.android.com/quick-share/with-iphone/ [2] https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/6550 https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/6550 [3] https://grapheneos.org/usage#banking-apps https://grapheneos.org/usage#banking-apps

jakegmaths 2mo ago

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.

dogman1050 2mo ago
This is exactly why I don't use it and have it disabled. The arrogance of that message is stunning. I use Aves and it works just fine.

pmontra 2mo ago

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. [1] https://github.com/deckerst/aves https://github.com/deckerst/aves

darkwater 2mo ago

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!

darkstar_16 2mo ago
How much data do you have ? Isn't B2 expensive at certain size ?
- darkwater 2mo ago
  <goes to check notes...> I have 850GB in B2 across all the backups I store there and I pay around 7$ a month. Any better price from any underdog provider? I'm definetely not going to pay 10EUR/month for Google One's 2TB. I still need to check if I can optimize B2 costs by using different tiers (I mean, these are mainly disaster recovery backups so I dont care about fast copy times)
- michaelt 2mo ago
  For photos, it's kinda fine? You can store 2TB for $14 per month; to fill that with photos you'd have to shoot 0.5GB/day for 10 years. You can spend less - Google Drive and iCloud will offer 2TB for $10/month - but they don't really want power users who use their whole quota, so they don't make things like command line / API access easy. Likewise Backblaze has an 'unlimited' backup option - but it's desktop mac-and-windows only, and it's selective about what it backs up - only 'user generated' files.
  - ValentineC 2mo ago
    > You can spend less - Google Drive and iCloud will offer 2TB for $10/month - but they don't really want power users who use their whole quota, so they don't make things like command line / API access easy. rclone works very, very well with Google Drive: https://rclone.org/drive/ https://rclone.org/drive/

lowleveldesign 2mo ago

One of the answers points the right steps to disable the Google account (and the annoying popup) in the Photos app: - click on the account icon - choose switch account and pick use this application without an account

TekMol 2mo ago
Just tried that. Unfortunately, it seems to completely mess up the interface? I couldn't even see all photos anymore. Even though I do not use backup at all. So it is not possible that those photos are in the cloud or something.
- gertop 2mo ago
  Force close the app and clear the cache, your photos will come back. Or clear data completely, then open the app "for the first time" and immediately log out. It'll work, but as you've discovered, google made sure that it isn't the happy path. Also no search (not even by file name), no albums, some editing functions won't work (even though they're local), and a few more annoyances. but also no more backup prompt...
  - TekMol 2mo ago
    Oh, that looks good! I closed the app, stopped it and cleared the cache. Then restarted it. The UI is surprisingly sane now. My first impression is that it is much better than before. Everything is neatly layed out in a series of albums, for each the latest images are shown and I can click on the album name and it displays them all. So I do see my albums. Those seem to be just directories in /Pictures/ which it seems I can edit with the files app? Am I missing out on anything this way? I don't need search. All the usualy edit functions like cropping, adjusting colors etc also seem to still be there.
  - wila 2mo ago
    Is google lens still available? That's perhaps the only cloud feature I sometimes use, in order to translate Chinese text to English or similar. Also is it possible to undo (in case there's something I don't like?) Is it just a matter of adding the app back to your account?

jzer0cool 2mo ago

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?

anon48293 2mo ago
Is this to select them, or make stickers out of them?
trelbutate 2mo ago
That runs locally as far as I know. I have backup turned off and I can still search for simple things in the photos (like "dog"), but nothing more complex than that. Only when you enable the backup and it gets uploaded to the cloud do they run more advanced models on it.

BatteryMountain 2mo ago

In short, uninstall google photos. It has a bunch of other undesirable behaviours, the prompts are just one irritation.

xyst 2mo ago

solution: self host immich

ta8903 2mo ago

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.

ura_yukimitsu 2mo ago
Using the website means the photos are backed up in the cloud which is precisely what they don't want. And in the first place, you shouldn't have to use an ad blocker to turn off something that you should be able to turn off with a setting. Also huge disagree on websites having better UX than native apps; it may be true more often on PC, and it may also be true on mobile for some apps that are particularly bad, but otherwise I observe the exact opposite of what you're saying.

Steve16384 2mo ago

This is another argument that we need more phone OS options, not just Android and iPhone. (Graphene isn't really a proper option yet).

phrotoma 2mo ago

I don't get it. I'm also a paying customer and I have never seen this prompt. My google photos album goes back to 2006.

dotdi 2mo ago

Another +1 for migrating to Immich. 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.

cube00 2mo ago
I personally can't trust OneDrive to handle my irreplaceable data, switching on silently, takes your data if you try and turn it off because it swapped out your files for "online only" stubs, randomly files just end up not coming back down silently, sync fails silently. Plenty of horror stories out there, eg. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37408794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37408794 If you could run OneDrive with debug level logging I can only imagine the flood of errors they must be ignoring. It also never takes "no" for an answer: https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-11/331890/hell-freezes-over-if-only-slightly https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-11/331890/hell-free...

Brajeshwar 2mo ago

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). https://brajeshwar.com/2021/how-to-delete-all-photos-and-get-off-google-photos/ https://brajeshwar.com/2021/how-to-delete-all-photos-and-get...

functionmouse 2mo ago

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.

3Sophons 2mo ago

Here is a open source OS to allow you to self host immich with 1 click https://www.olares.com/docs/use-cases/immich https://www.olares.com/docs/use-cases/immich

rmellow 2mo ago

Does Big Tech understand consent? [ ] Yes [ ] Ask me again later

WarmWash 2mo ago
The actual problem is that all this stuff is "free" and after many years of this, expected to be "free".
xg15 2mo ago
They're the enlightened few! Your consent is assumed for your own good!

afarah1 2mo ago

Worth the shout-out to the open source NetGuard app which allows you to block internet access for select apps without root, using Android's always-on VPN feature as a firewall. This is useful to prevent this and any other apps from talking to the network in a way external to the app itself.

rationalist 2mo ago
Then you can't use an actual VPN.
- afarah1 2mo ago
  Correct, but there are no better non-root alternatives as far as I know. Would love to be proved wrong. There are some workarounds to use NetGuard with a VPN based on a work profile or something, but I haven't personally tried them and cannot attest to them working.

cube00 2mo ago

Plastering a "Back up now" pill over the top of every photo (not a header, I mean it actually covers the photo) was always a favourite of mine. Example (doesn't show it covering the photo but view a portrait photo and you'll see it): https://media.zenfs.com/en/android_police_756/2ba414b46f97320c60a40e6ba34f5c8c https://media.zenfs.com/en/android_police_756/2ba414b46f9732...

Zopieux 2mo ago
Bad take. This is exactly how I use non-auto-backup Photos: 99% of my shitty smartphone pictures are local only, and I don't care to lose them. Occasionally though, I want to share or save a photo. Having this (small) button is quite convenient.
- chownie 1mo ago
  If it's only occasional use then you're actually using the button sometimes and having it cover a chunk of every single picture you look at, all the time. It can go in a sub-menu.

thrownaway561 2mo ago

Alternatives to Google Photos and self hosting: If you pay for an Amazon Prime account, Amazon Photos is included. You get unlimited photos storage If you pay for a M365 license, you get 1TB of photo space on OneDrive I get these aren't free, however if you are already paying for a service which give you photo storage, why pay Google. Also, let's face it, most people have an Amazon Prime account or pay for a M365 account to use Office.

michal_kurowski 2mo ago

[dead]

vertnerd 2mo ago

We (wife and I) de-googled ourselves about a year and a half ago, moving half a TB of photos to Ente and canceling our paid Google subscription (while still keeping our gmail addresses). We set up our (Android) phones to back up photos to Ente and everything was lovely. Then I started noticing my wife's Google Photos storage use growing again. Somehow her phone had been switched to backing up on Google again. I turned it off. Then it happened again. And again. She couldn't explain how it happened, but I suspected she was the victim of a scary prompt warning that her photos weren't getting backed up. This wasn't happening to me because I had switched my phone to LineageOS, but hers was still a stock Pixel with Android. Lately, I have run across a different example of Google locking in its services. As part of our process of leaving Google, we moved our email, contacts and calendars to mailbox.org. I set up her phone's calendar app to use the new server but to my dismay every new appointment was defaulting to use the Google calendar service! I switched her to the Etar calendar app (which is the default app on LineageOS), disabled the default calendar, and asked her to use Etar instead. Everything was great until I began to notice that her new appointments were showing up on Google again! I look at her phone and see that Etar is completely gone and the only calendar app available is the default Android one. This calendar fiasco only just revealed itself the other day, so I haven't had enough time to figure out how or when it happened but it feels like it might be the same Google Photos tactic of sucking people back into Google.

OptionOfT 2mo ago
My work uses Google. Many websites now have a popup 'sign-in with Google' to keep you using their ecosystem.
- throwuxiytayq 2mo ago
  It's not the websites. Your browser has that popup.
  - accountofthaha 2mo ago
    No. It's the websites.

jonathanlydall 2mo ago

Probably had a dialog like this: Do you want to do <x>? - Yes - Maybe later Missing the "no, never" option. Also, those of us who don't use Chrome have to periodically put up with the "It's better in Chrome/The Google App!" popups on all their properties (even when using a Chromium based browser), to make matters worse the popover has the "yes, let's get Google/Chrome" option as a blue button with the "maybe later" having a transparent background meaning if you absent mindedly tap the "natural" option you're annoyingly disrupted even further.

aqfamnzc 2mo ago
I honestly think I've been trained to ignore the "natural" button across all computer/phone usage because of how common this dark pattern is. Over the years it's switched my brain to first look for the greyed-out text, haha.

merryocha 2mo ago

I personally use Fossify Gallery to browse my photos and I just manually back up my photos from time to time by plugging my phone into my PC and copying the entire folder into an Archive folder which I keep organized by year and back up in multiple places. It's an oldschool solution to the problem but it works great for me.

defrim 2mo ago
fossify gallery is great, but any idea how to only view videos? while there are sections for favorites, screenshots, and others, I don't see any for videos

yipinwong 2mo ago

Not been a proponent of OSS, but started using more of them hosted in my private VPS because of subtle/explit dark patterns in big company services. Things are easier to host now, and big companies are now good for infrastructures. We can simply create and use bespoke services ourselves thanks to AIs

protimewaster 2mo ago

I use Google Photos on GrapheneOS, and Google Photos is blocked from network access (via the network permission exposed on GOS). That must prevent this popup from occurring, because I've never seen it.

daemin 2mo ago

Is it actually a backup though or only a cloud sync? Given how the other major provider behaves I have to assume that it's a cloud sync, not a backup, and that your photos will no longer be yours but instead stored on someone else's computer.

Tommix11 2mo ago

I recently started using fossify's photos app to get away from this popup annoyance! The app SO DESPERATELY wants to backup my photos that the app is no longer usable.

BurnGpuBurn 2mo ago

Another day, another enshittification of a Microsoft product. Nothing new here.

xg15 2mo ago

I recently canceled my Google One subscription. You can cancel any time, but Google WILL make sure you're feeling the withdrawal symptoms fast. Because without the subscription I had overstretched my storage space, several Google apps went full red-alert-and-howling-klaxons, plastering their UI with warnings about my data's impending doom, should I not solve the storage problem quickly or resume the subscription. The most obnoxious was Google Photos: It showed a red warning message on 1/3 of the screen space and put a red "no cloud backup" marker on every single thumbnail in the gallery. All that even though cloud backup was turned OFF. None of those photos was supposed to be backed up anyway. The app will let you turn off the backup any time, but for unfathomable reasons, it will still get angry if you don't keep enough storage space reserved so you could "hypothetically" turn it back on...

panny 2mo ago

My goal is to move to LineageOS by the end of the month since Google is being such an asshole about "sideloading" (installing) applications. Losing this antifeature will be a nice bonus.

ksudb 2mo ago

[dead]

vrighter 2mo ago

you disable it and install some other sane app that doesn't try to trick you into enabling google drive every other day

kooi 2mo ago

Immich + tailscale is great. Setup a little DNS server and now your computer can go to your photos.<lastname>.It's great. Setting up backups: Ja. Just setup rsync between a couple computers, good to go.