Google Photos App Negative ReviewsGoogle LLC

Google Photos Negative Reviews

4.6
4.66474 star

Total 78 Negative Reviews

Google Photos App Complaints & User Negative Comments 2023

Google Photos app received 78 complaints, negative comments and reviews by users. Have you ever had a bad experience using Google Photos? Can you share your negative thoughts about google photos?

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Google Photos for Negative User Reviews

Unlimited high qualityI just learnt that google will not provide unlimited high quality pictures and videos to be uploaded starting mid next year. This was one of the best options that was provided and I’m very disappointed. Could you please tell me if all users have to pay after the new change and remove all the previous photos?.Version: 5.19

Google photoThese companies are making billions of pounds a year and I just find it scandalous that you have to enter a subscription to save your memories, they absolutely rob you anyway when you get a phone on contract, they tell you for £67 a month you can have unlimited data calls and texts but they know your not going to actually use that much, these mobile phone companies feed you all the crap promising you this and that just to get you to sign your name on that contract, let’s have it right, most of us probably make about 100 to 200 call about 600 texts on a good week and about 4gig date a month, because they no that your going to be joined to your work Wi-Fi or your home Wi-Fi most of the day so basically they know there robbing us and rub there hands together laughing at us, and now we’ve got to pay for storage, more subscription based crap, drivers me up the flipping wall, I’ve got Apple messaging me everyday telling me I need to pay for more iCloud and I’ve got one drive on my phone as well so I’m also getting emails x15 a day of Google telling me there’s been recent changes and I need to subscribe to more cloud storage, we’re all crackers I think… we love giving our money away to these billionaire tech giants.. rant over...Version: 6.33

Why would you?Why would a service like unlimited photo storage change? many people use it to save up storage and this is just sad if y’all can change your mind, many people would keep the app.Version: 5.22

Ok for folks that take social photosFirst, most of my computers are Apple, and I take a lot of photos with my iPhone. This Google app/ system is ok for users that want to take snapshots to post on social media. As an Engineer and technical craftsman, I can’t discern if there is any way to use it for these purposes. My requirements are for technical photographs showing processes and assemblies mainly to send to publishers (and to publish on-line) illustrations for engineering uses. From what I can determine, is’s not too good for that, although I have never purchased a “For Dummies” book and learned the full capabilities of Google Photos. However, I vastly prefer it over the Apple Photo program that takes control of all content, holds them hostage, and deletes them if you don’t want to play by their rules and pay their fees. I actually purchased a Windows-10 laptop for my phone and camera downloads rather than struggle trying to convert and download my pictures to something a user completely “Apple” can use. I do store my social photos ( family, weddings, and vacations, etc.) on Google Photos, simply because they separate them by date and Google doesn’t mess with them further. And, you can download photos to a thumb drive and take them to a corner drugstore photo printer and gets prints for Granny, something impossible with anything Apple..Version: 4.10

Hate this stupid appI’ve used google photos for 4 years now. Little did I know that this was a mistake! All of my photos have been backed up and saved to google photos over the years- and apparently this supposed storage app was actually a black hole. I am now out of storage space, and because of it, my phone practically doesn’t work anymore! It’s been the biggest mess! It’s keeping me from sending messages, receiving mail, taking photos, sending and receiving calls, and just generally using my phone! In an effort to fix this, I purchased a photo drive usb type thing to download all of my photos onto. Little did I realize that it only downloaded from a normal photos app, not google photos. So now I had my work cut out for me. I started off by trying to transfer all of my google photos pictures back to my normal photos app, and was very frustrated to find that the only way to do this was to go one at a time through every single photo. I gave up after about 200+ transfers. So I scoured the web searching for possible solutions. In the end I keep coming to the same conclusion. I either have to change all of my saved photos and videos to a lower resolution, or I have to pay money every month for more storage. I feel really stinking frustrated. I don’t know what to do. If anyone knows a solution I would really appreciate it, thanks!!!.Version: 5.22

Great product. Buggy app- Constantly freezes for 4-5 seconds on both iPhone and iPad (latest models). Especially when navigating between different screens. - Using the editor to crop and rotate will often result with “unable to save” or a duplicate photo. - After assigning a face to a name group, the back button won’t work and there’s no way to go back out requiring a force quit. - Faces that have already been tagged are constantly reset back to unnamed. - Faces of statues and paintings that have already been removed and reported as not people still keep showing up in people list. - When suggesting photos for things it will ask “Does this contain {searchQuery}?” - Error message “trouble joining album” when trying to join a shared album. - Editing date and location of photos in Google Photos doesn’t update the metadata when downloading photos back to device (especially for photos scanned with Google Photoscanner).Version: 5.39

Warning - Very hard to get your photos backGoogle have added some convenient bugs which mean once you start using this, you will not be able to get your photos back off the Google platform in a clean way, effectively meaning you are locked in to Google photos for life: 1) there is a bug in the app which prevents concurrently downloading photos and videos back to the device, ie once backed up to Google and deleted to free up space on the phone, you are not going to be able to re-download them unless you do it one-at-time, also 2) slo-mo videos lose timing data when downloading and 3) although you can download all the photos via the web using the Takeout service, this can corrupt the photo metadata (date taken etc) and does not download Live Photos correctly. Once they are inside the Google ecosystem you are not going to be able to get your photos back out in one piece - Google do not want you to stop using this, ever - and so you will find it almost impossible to switch back to iCloud or another photo manager - be warned!!.Version: 5.22

Everyone needs this app!UPDATE 2020: Love the idea of this app and I’ve been using it for years across my devices. The latest update isn’t great however. I use the “search” function a lot and now there is an extra step to it as the search bar at the top has been removed. Also, please bring back the “open in Snapseed” option for all photos. It now only seems to work on certain pictures. Otherwise it’s a great app for backing up precious memories. Old 5* review: This is probably my most used app. I have it installed across all my devices, so I'm able to access and edit photos seamlessly. I have it on the free unlimited storage setting, and it has literally thousands of my photos backed up without any issues. Very simple to use. I originally only downloaded it due to my old iPhone 5S being 16gb, and I required the extra storage, but when I realised that I can share photos directly from Google Photos in to an editing app, I realised it was a keeper, much easier than the built in gallery. I now use it as the default photo app on my 64gb 6S. Honestly, I'd be lost without this app! Highly recommended..Version: 5.0

Assistant does assistWhilst the process of storing your photos in the cloud is relatively straightforward, loading the photos “in the background” is not in the background and can take over your WiFi denying other use whilst images are automatically uploading. Secondly it has an assistant that will do all sorts of things such as “remember this day” and add fancy effects to produce stylised photos. All this is a gimmick. The assistant will automatically find images that it thinks needs rotating which is excellent and necessary. My bugbear and the reason why have only given it three stars is that I have hundreds or maybe thousands of photos that need rotating and google photos rarely, maybe once every couple of months, makes suggestions for maybe 10 pictures that need rotating. So Google if you are listening cut out all toys and give us the functionality we know you are capable of doing..Version: 3.22.0

Google changed their policyGoogle is changing their policy of storing the photo for free, I feel cheated.Version: 5.19

First google play music now google photosGoogle is going downhill really fast used to like them as a company over the past few months that all changed. They screwed my GF over in play store and will not return her money after an app scammed her and now they are got rid of google play music and now will get rid of google photos (no longer free). I hope they change because I don’t see a lot of people paying for YouTube music especially when it sucks even if your paying for it. And same with google photos. I will be looking into other company’s or buying hard drives instead of staying with google..Version: 5.19

Zero privacyIt forces you to share ALL your photos with the app, and if you delete one from the app it also deletes is from your phone (like from for photo library). So annoying, I want some privacy!.Version: 5.50

Great app until.... $$$$$$This app is amazing, I’ve lost important photos before when I’ve updated my phone a couple of years ago, then I found google photos that constantly keeps all your photos and videos in the cloud so you never have to worry about loosing them again! This app is a game changer compared to iCloud that has just a tiny amount of space, and you need to purchase more space to adding photos, and that was the best part about google photos, it was free. And as a student with student loans I don’t have a lot of extra money to spend it on extra cloud space, especially when the money could go towards food or actual space in the real world like my rent. But I’ve gotten the news that google will now be charging for more space, and I’m absolutely devastated I’m using this service as of now, ( while it’s still free), but I can’t guarantee that I’m going to keep using it once I need to purchase more space, like what’s making me purchase google photo space, when if I was gonna purchase more space I could buy Icloud space, and have it be way more convenient and without all the extra steps of uploading my photos then deleting them off my phone and opening another app on top of my Apple photos? It’s just not practical and I’m very sad that I’ll most likely have to move from google photos once I run out of space. Rip free google photos, you will be greatly missed..Version: 5.22

Not foolproof - they lost my photosI’ve been using Google Photos for years. I switched to Google Photos even though I use an iPhone and a Mac because my library was too big and it was taking up too much space on my iPhone. if I deleted pictures from my iPhone, it would delete them from iCloud. So I needed a way to store my photos but still be able to delete them off my phone when I needed space so I switched to Google photos. Sometime last year I was looking for photos from 2013 and they’re almost all gone. There’s a few things left, but most everything is gone before 2017. I exchanged a multitude of emails with their support team and they couldn’t help me. I have a very large storage capacity and never missed any annual payments for that. I didn’t delete them. So there’s no reason that my photos/videos should’ve disappeared. Customer support was terrible. Just exchanging emails with them was disjointed and time consuming. You can’t talk to anyone live so it’s a back and forth thing and they could give me any answers as to why they have gone missing. And then today I was trying to share some older photos but even though I can see them in the app when I try to share them it tells me that they need to be backed up first - but because the originals are not on my phone anymore the backup can’t happen. I’m crushed. These are all my kids photos from when they were babies. I thought Google would be the safest place to store them but clearly they’re not..Version: 6.33

Great, but disappointedI was really happy with this service, however… When I signed for the service it was marketed as “free unlimited storage of pics” if you didn’t mind the resolution of the pics being capped. Great for me and great for most probably. Most of my pics are backed up there now. Then they changed their policy to a pay system, so all of a sudden they have my pics hostage. I am kind of stuck now, unless I pay up, move all my photos to a local HD or some other photo storage service. It feels as if I’m being extorted. I trusted the early promise, now they have the only copy of a lot of my photos. Seems pretty shady..Version: 5.51

Google photo is terribleWhy do you have to make it so complicated and confusing. Why does this software resist me most of the time? Why can I not simply move my photo files around as I see fit, just like the file manager in Windows, add, delete, move single photo files, strings of files, folders with files, trees of folders, anything? From my computer to my Google cloud setup for photos or any other kind of files? Or move photos into the cloud from an email or text message, or from a usb key? Once in the cloud, why can I not set up my own folders and move files/photos in and out of those as I see fit? Why can you not make it simple and straightforward? I am very frustrated!.Version: 4.26.2

NEW POLICYI started using google photos because it had unlimited storage for photos and videos. and now with this new policy it will no longer be the same. so what the hell am i supposed to do now..Version: 5.19

Nope!!!!!Access to all my photos?? And that’s the only option?? And Google owns the rights??? They can go eff them selves!!.Version: 5.50

Beware! Infringement of privacy for a forced feeGoogle photos uploads photos and screenshots without any permission from iPhone devices using sync. It is advertised as kept encrypted but who knows?!.. Apple iCloud team, for example, screens all photos that users upload to their servers. Deleting is a nightmare: I’m on my second day manually deleting all photos Google uploaded to their servers without me knowing about it and permitting this. Deleting when Camera Roll is still unsorted/exported via iTunes can result in losing all your photos PERMANENTLY. This is a data fascism as Google Photos do not own any of this data and have no rights to “virtually detain” my life moments as well as storing on their servers screenshots of my medical cards, passports and travel documents which where uploaded along with my family and travel photos. I read a couple of other comments: Google plans to charge a fee for data storage now. That’s Orwellian - we are on your memories and you have to pay to us to get access to them 🙈.Version: 5.22

InvasiveNow won’t allow you even access the app to view previously shared photos, unless you give the app full access to all your photos. They do not need this access, and don’t provide a valid reason for it. It’s scammy and invasive..Version: 5.52

New updateI have been using this app for ages and I don’t like that you have to pay now, but the main problem that came after the new update is that the app runs excruciatingly slow and takes two or more presses to favorite something. Please fix this, it makes my experience with this app really slow and annoying. thank you Edit: after tinge new update I can’t share and it super slow still.Version: 5.50

It’s ok for free!Free high quality unlimited storage! It is feature rich and excellent with searching features. I took one star off, because I hope one day google creates a stand alone photo app for my computer, rather than just an uploader for computer. And another star off because the use of my uploads in googles policy is not as wholesome for my liking (they explicitly explain that google scans your photos and combines it with other services likely to advertise to you). Videos take ages to buffer or play once uploaded. And uploading lots of stuff takes ages too, and doesn’t seem to remain uploading in the background if you leave the app. But for a cost free overall alternative, how can you not like the service, with apps for iPhone and iPad and is free..Version: 3.14.0

Cast icon disappearedRecent update no longer show cast icon. Connected to same wifi..Version: 4.23

Google needs to put more effort into PhotosGoogle photos is very clumsy and quite variable across different platforms. In fact it has not evolved much since picassa - and google destroyed a lot of its credibility when it withdrew support for picassa. And then launched Google photos which is about the same - go figure??? The things i hate include Its hard to find where your files are stored. Facial recognition is slow and adding names on a PC is haphazard. Movies dont have music or any panning - in fact they are really dull. Locations dont allow you to select locations on google maps. Etc etc etc All in all apple photos is a much more pleasant platform- somerhing i am really frustrated by because i chose to go with google photos..Version: 5.62

No flexibilityGoogle photos is an all or nothing app. Either it backs up all your photos, every single one, or none at all. Sometimes I use a screen shot as a quick reference for a few minutes then delete it from my phone, but then it’s still in the google account. It’s extremely frustrating to go back delete them from google, especially because that too is difficult to do. There’s no easy way to scroll through and delete quickly. You either have to view them from a small thumbnail and hope you’re not deleting something important or take a long time looking at each one and having to click multiple times to delete 1 photo. I am trying to free up space on my phone so deleting photos is supposed to be the easy choice since I have them backed up to google. However it either gives me option to delete ALL of the photos off my phone or none at all. There are still plenty of pictures I would like to keep sorted in the folders I created on my phone for quick reference. I’ve heard the argument “well they’re still on your phone you just have to open google photos instead of your regular photos.” This is of no use if you are somewhere with spotty or no internet connection. The app is not user friendly, the interface is not clean, and the way it sorts photos is of no real use to me. There should be extensive settings where I can toggle on and off different combinations of options..Version: 4.34

Wants full access to photosNo way I grant access to all photos. And the app won’t work without it ... uninstall.Version: 5.15

Was great. Before it cost money…They really got me by the balls. Loaded all my photos for years on here now they made it not free anymore. Very disappointing and can’t find any alternatives. Damn you google..Version: 5.53

Google removing unlimited photo uploads ?Typical, first get users to upload to your platform then try to stick it to them to pay for more storage. I figured you give me free uploads and in exchange google can sniff through my emails 👎🏻.Version: 5.19

Yet another appThat’s defying it’s own mission statement. They chose to say never run out of space again. Now there will no longer be free storage (beyond a pitiful amount). Well, guess what? You broke your own promise..Version: 5.19

A poor substitute for PicasawebHaving comfortably used Picasaweb (and Picasa) for many years and having built up over 100 albums, I find Google Photos to be a big disappointment. The album sort options are non existent. The thumbnail view is not available, instead a collage view which seems to randomly select the size of photos rather than allowing you to make a more meaningful selection. It also seems impossible to prevent GP from backing up all of the pictures on a phone, most of which are rubbish sent by others. Google needs to leave things that are working well (Picasa) alone until they can offer something better. Further comments- uploading is slow and bandwidth intensive. Unlike Picasa which resized the photos locally before upload, GP uploads full sized files and then resizes for ones albums. This leads to painful and unreliable uploads A couple of years on and my opinion has not changed. I still use Picasaweb to view thumbnails and photos that I have not uploaded to Google. Please implement sorting of albums manually. Still 2 stars only..Version: 5.2

Makes you delete from your phone and iCloud.I recently decide that I wanted more than the 5gb free of iCloud storage, so I used google photos, after all of my photos were uploaded, I had run out of storage, I had used my google account that I use for everything, so I needed space, the first thing I did, was selected all of my photos in google photos, and deleted them. So after 10 years of taking photos on my iPhone, I now have lost EVERYTHING including in iCloud, because google photos doesn’t allow you to delete just from photos, and is suspiciously cryptic about what the delete function does..Version: 5.60

Google give!App works easy enough to navigate and use and features like collage movies etc fun take on your photos and look forward to the ‘a year ago’ or ‘5 years ago’ photo ensembles Google designs but they are quite basic. I had one that was beautifully done until there was a photo of me taken under the chin up a added to this beautifully choreographed piece of memories and ruined it! Lol An idea?! when we sign up for Google photos in the profile be more specific about who you are in images and what to not keep in images. I can’t afford Google storage right now due to Covid and loss of business life is tough but I have every right like you to have photos kept on my phone or I should! so I’m stuck erasing many bad blurry out of focus blank images that I took one by one painfully slow and time I need to make money in order to buy iCloud storage?! Ironic! So….how great if Google asked the user their preferences like a dating site on what images they delete automatically when taken. All cameras are the same so easy to set blurred or no image or too light or bad angles of portrait etc even fun if you added’ don’t ever keep a bad photo of me!’ Lol automatically save space!!! battery!!! and headaches. and precious TIME! So have to go and these my motto….. ‘think outside the screen! ‘ ‘look up to see how beautiful the day can be!’.Version: 5.92

It was great up until the recent update.I currently have an iPhone XR and I take pictures with it everyday. I use google photos to save all my photos about twice a week. It worked perfectly fine. I have thousandsssss of photos and videos online and Google Photos worked for me for over 1 year. It worked perfectly fine. Now my videos won’t upload. I’ve tried changing the setting on my camera to lower settings for storage. I thought that maybe the files were to large. But after countless to testing none of my videos have uploaded. I’ve even tried screen recordings and Live Photo’s. They don’t upload either. So then I thought it was my WiFi connection. It might be slow or something. So I tried it in my school campus’s WiFi which is really fast. I’ve tested it up to speed over 1 gb a sec. didn’t work. I’ve tried it with my LTE full bars unlimited thanks to Verizon and still nothing. I’ve tried my WiFi at home and disconnected every device from the WiFi and left my phone to upload for 2 hours. I then came back and nothing. My phone has 92 gb of video alone and a ton of photos. Idk what to do. This app WAS amazing and I promise you all it worked for me hundreds of times before but this update ruined it for me. I hope it’s a glitch or something and they fix it soon. I’m begging you guys google 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽.Version: 5.1

Horrible for backupLimited space. Can’t remove photos from local without it going off of google photos. Photos disappear for no rhyme or reason. You get what you pay for..Version: 5.76

VideosBrilliant app for keeping things in one spot and being able too access and download from any device. Editing options could be easier. Like blocking out faces to comply with Safegurarding guidelines. BUT...... It doesn't accept videos very well. So hard to get backed up. Even over wigfi it takes hours some videos won't upload at all and less than a minute long. So annoying. It doesn’t like screenshots and they get thrown into the items that won’t upload file. I would love this to be fixed if possible. Videos are less than 10 mins long 90%less than 3mins long. It's been trying for weeks to loadsK ones over 3mins long. When creating videos you now can’t edit them after. I’m paying for premium and service is getting worse not better 🥺.Version: 6.1

This app is a parasitePLEASE make it obvious how to prevent Google Photos from accessing your iCloud photos. It is a parasite that is adding all of my photos to my Drive storage even though I don’t use it and deleted it a long time ago. I don’t want the storage on my phone taken up on my Google Drive as well. It means I only have 2 GB that can be used for Slides, Docs, and files, since you get 15 for free. This is a much bigger problem than it should be, since I CANNOT get Google Photos to stop syncing my iPhone photos to my Drive. It is literally preventing me from creating Slides and Docs since it’s taking up 13 GB from my phone and taxing that on my Drive as well. I turned syncing off and deleted the app again yet it is still saying that Google Photos is taking up 13 GB of my 15 GB storage on my Drive. I can’t just remove all of my photos on there because it would then delete the photo I have on my iPhone. This is even more infuriating since I don’t even use Google Photos. I deleted it a long time ago and then I go to edit a Google Slide and it says that i can’t because my storage is full. All taken up by an app I don’t even use, and something that should only take up iCloud storage, NOT Google Drive. It is using my iPhone photos to prevent me from using Slides and Docs. This is terrible. I’ll delete my review if this is resolved..Version: 5.58

Worst app everI wanted to load on the photos on my phone so I could free up space, but the limit on what’s free is really small and the space is shared with your email so it started to tell me that my email was full and I wasn’t gonna receive emails anymore. Obviously that’s the dumbest thing ever so I bought a 2 TB hard drive and decided to store my extra photos that way, because the concept of paying for space in the “cloud” is honestly ridiculous imo. But the reason that I even am taking the time to write this review is because when I then went to delete the photos from google photos it didn’t give me the option to do so without also deleting them from my phone. So as far as I’m aware there permanently on Google and if I want to delete them off of Google I also delete them from my phone. There may be a way around the but I didn’t do too much digging. Also it divides all the photos by day so if you want to highlight all of your photos to delete a big chunk at a time you can’t. There’s so many things that are just so painfully dumb about this app that I had to write this review which isn’t something that I normally do. But unless you love manually deleting emails 100 at a time (there were 12,000 in my inbox) and having Google photos permanently linked to your Apple photos, or you just absolutely love paying for storage don’t waste your time and energy..Version: 5.73

Below average app, extremely poor given Google Devs are behind the wheelThere are so many areas ‘Needing’ improvements! Some areas are simply hanging about in some form of inefficient ‘angsty, loitering teenager wanting attention’ fashion and other areas that would, if tweaked, would offer a touch of class; all of, any or even just a few changes would benefit overall look and feel. Areas ripe for development appear to remain unidentified, subsequently neglected with zero enhancement opportunity realised. It begs for an injection of, sorry - an aggressive, high-freq, high-dosed course of - innovation which could and would bring this app forward and thus far closer to the standard which Google should demonstrate instinctively. From the UI to the background operations to the basic functionality through to enhanced functionality, user privileges through to the customer journey, the overall experience and bespoke customisation, skins, editing tools and plugins... and almost everything in between...simply requires ‘more’..Version: 3.29

Big fake(I suspected that google photos would stop being free someday but hoped that maybe my thoughts were wrong, now google confirmed they gonna make you to pay for that and now I see that this “free” app were just a trick to collect as many users as possible((( very frustrating, many people trusted you and transferred all their photo collection on your service, shame on you for that, not interested in you any more, if I wanna pay, I’ll find other services....Version: 5.20

Why?I seem to get a little #1 on the app icon everyday, as if to say I have a notification! But when I open the app there is no notification, seems google just want you to click on their app once a day for whatever reason??? If you open the app then immediately close it, it won’t hassle you again today, but tomorrow we go through it again. I try my best to support all google products only to find fault, on the 30 or so occasions I’ve had to deal with customer support with both a bug report and a FIX for them, half the time a patch is written that night with an update available the following morning, AWESOME!!! The other half of the time I felt 100% ignored. This 50% success rate of google actually listening to your legitimate complaint makes them the leaders of many industries, as most companies won’t change their product to suit you, they will give you a walk through on how to use their product but if you’re going to complain most companies will ignore you, not at Google! If your complaint sounds legitimate and can be fixed, Google will get straight onto it. This is a FIVE star product that only lets itself down by scamming you into clicking on it once a day by way of a fake notification that doesn’t exist when you get there. The reason for one star is, if you don’t get 5 you get 1, as I don’t read reviews rating 2, 3 or four stars & assume either do many people. That’s all folks ;).Version: 5.20

Google promisesWell this didn’t pan out, with them going to paid service. Not going to work long term.Version: 5.19

Was happy with it - not anymoreSomeone recommended this app to me a while ago and it was absolutely wonderful. I backed up and stored everything on there, before cautiously deleting everything from my phone. And a week later, all of my memories were gone. Over 15,000 photos and videos. I can’t tell you how upset I am by this. Those memories can’t be restored and I will never be able to see them again. If this was a glitch in the system, please FIX it. I won’t be relying on this app anymore, and I hope no one else will have to experience something like this..Version: 5.22

Holding my photos to ransom!As per a few reviews on here, I innocently downloaded the app not aware that it would sync all my images up to the limit and then demand I pay for extra storage without giving a way to undo the syncing. I don’t want to sign myself up to paying google for a lifetime (when I already pay Apple for iCloud) so I started deleting photos in Google images to clear space, as it was saying I couldn’t receive emails, and soon realised this was replicating in iCloud. For a scary moment, I thought I’d lost years of memories. I managed to work out how to stop this (turning off backup and sync only stopped it for new images - not the ones that had already synced. I had to delete the app, download it again and deny access to photos when it asked), and but I’m still nervous to delete too much from google photos in case the sync is still going to kick into place. So I had to manually pick those I was least worried about to free up enough space to keep me going and keep my email account alive. I’m not sure this is actually legal, as nowhere did I actually agree to Google holding all my images to ransom. How can there not be a “restore” function?? Naturally all the questions to this effect in the Google forums have been “locked” with no answer. What a stressful evening. I now hate Google a lot..Version: 6.29

No audioSince iOS 15 beta 5 there is no audio on any of my videos. Yet they play fine in iOS Photos. This still is an issue in the final version of iOS 15.Version: 5.59

Brilliant until the new announcementI’ve been using Google Photos for a few years now, mainly as my primary backup of my photographs taken using my phone. It allows me to keep my phone space free while being able to formulate albums, mark favourites and easily share memories to other apps. I am an avid photographer of my children (my memory isn’t as good as it was, thanks baby brain) and the Recent Highlights/highlights of this week from previous years has enabled me to easily revisit cherished moments. Now if I had written this review last week, it would have been 5 stars, but the announcement that there will now be a charge has put a dampener on whether I continue to use this app or find another free way of storing my photographs. I’m trying to find a way of writing this without sounding petty (and failing) but it’s disappointing to see this currently free service now be charged for additional storage, of which shall be within 7 months if the calculated projected timescale for me is correct. The fact that it was free for unlimited storage at a marginally lower quality (which was still amazing quality) was a huge pull for me to use this service. I don’t have a lot of spare time to sit and manually back up and organise my photos so this app has really helped me to feel organised and up to date when I’ve been able to have a spare few minutes. I am really reluctant to have my photos in different places, but if the charges come through then that may have to be the case..Version: 5.19

Terrible experience - Avoid!!!!Avoid!!!!! I have installed the app, and it only works if you give it access to all your photos, which I gave reluctantly, next thing I got a notification that My gmail account is full and I have to buy more storage to be able to continue to receive gmails and attachments etc, I tried deleting photos on google photos to open some space back, it started to delete the photos from my phone as well! Luckily I managed to recover my photos. The only way for me now is to revoke the access to my photos on my phone, log in to my google photos account on a laptop and delete all the photos one by one which will take ages! The whole thing is set up so that you are backed up in a corner and have no other choice rather than giving google some money monthly so that you can continue to use their usual free services! Such a scam from Google is disgusting!.Version: 5.97

Almost perfect, but there’s a killer flaw for sureSo I use google photos for every single photo I take - I back them up daily from my camera, phone and laptop, and have been doing so for several years. The smartphone app, and the web based page for computers on chrome have been practically perfect. The one flaw ruining this particular iPhone app for me, has been the fact that whenever I try scrolling further than a few months down my photo stream (I have 31,000 photos at the moment and fast rising, so I know it’s a fair old task for the app, fetching them from the cloud), the page I’m scrolling down clicks back up to the top again, and stops me finding those older photos. This leaves me forced to either use the PC version, or wait for an update of the app, as I’ve tried every possible solution I can come up with. I would love to know if I’m not the only one having this problem, as I’ve not seen it on other devices. I have a relatively new iPhone 7, running the same settings and IOS version as everyone I know who’s using the app, and I don’t see them having problems! Perhaps it’s the large number of photos on my account? I’d like to think an application this popular/large wouldn’t start to pick up issues around the point of 10,000 photos (that’s when I first had the problem), but can’t think of any other cause of the problem. DEVELOPERS - please get back to me, as it’s been over a year, and no update’s mentioned this problem, or a possible future fix!.Version: 4.22

Changed teams, long time user.For context I have been a user of Google Photos since launch, through Nexus and Pixel phones. This is a service that I will absolutely end up paying for and without complaint. Coming to iPhone has been really disappointing. The phone itself has been great, but no matter what the settings Google Photos does not upload new photos in the background. I understand that this is probably a system limitation as the App Store also does not really update apps in the background, and that is an Apple own app, but it is a limitation that is a quality of life downgrade. If the app could be improved to upload soon after taking a photo then it would be ideal, but as it stands if I lose my phone then I am probably also going to lose any photos taken since the last time I opened the app..Version: 6.11

Major Issues!!!June 20, 2022 - Below issues aren’t still unfixed and how come there is no Face ID/password option for this app? Apple iOS 16 will have a feature like this coming this September but I assumed Google would have done this years ago. The Google Drive app has this feature so why no Google Photos… August 09, 2021 - Why can’t you edit photos using erase like other apps (Meitu, Photo ReTouch, etc)? I hate taking a photo and wanting to erase a weird blue dot (common in iPhone photos) and I can’t so I need to use another app to correct it. January 03, 2020 - When I save a photo or video from a website, text message, etc the Google Photos app will unload the photo under the date that shows in photo’s metadata! This is horrible because when I save a photo and open the Google Photos app I expect to see the photo at the very top since that is the most recent photo saved but no... I have to search for the photo! I saved a photo that was taken two years ago per its “metadata” so the Google Photos app saved it based off that date and not the date I saved it too my phone (today). I had to search through 2 years of photos and videos in the app just to find that photo. This is extremely user unfriendly. Please allow users to either have photos and videos save by the date it was save/downloaded. I can’t believe this is even an issue in 2020 because every other media app does this correctly. Please update, thank you..Version: 5.95

It was great until it didnt store 1 video that’s very important to me.I was very upset it didn’t warn me that my videos weren’t backing up, so i ended up deleting my original photos in my iphone, google photos shold stop receiving videos and photos all together when it is NO LONGER backing up coz what’s the point???? I am very upset coz it let me edit a long video into a short one and i even make an album out of it beleiving it was backed up coz why can I edit if it’s NOT saved in google photos??? Is that the reason and purpose of tour App??? To back up files??? Yes i may or may have not turn on the “turn on back up” but I have a new fon and my settings must hve been new. My bottom line, i wouldve appreciated it if you tell me straight to face that the video I EDITED in your google photos ate not saved so you better save it somewhere..NO IM NOT UPGRADING IN YOUR UNTRSTWORTHY F#%^*APP!!!.Version: 5.10

Betrayed3 years ago, I saw an ad on YouTube for a app that can allow me to have unlimited photos. Now, it is not unlimited anymore and only has 15 gigabytes of storage. You all broke your promises. Yes it is cheap to have 2000 gigabytes of storage, but seriously? You all advertised it as free 3 years ago and unlimited..Version: 5.51

I’m trying to like it but I just can not!This app is an EPIC FAIL! I enabled the sync backup option. Well, now if I want to delete some of the pictures I uploaded, they will be deleted on my original device! I’m trying to solve this issue for awhile and this app will be deleted as soon as I know my pictures are save!.Version: 5.60

Broken promiseGoogle betrayed every user by breaking the free unlimited photo storage. I’ve been using it since 2016 and if google goes ahead with its plan, I’m planing to ditch all google services..Version: 5.19

Missing key featuresGreat app, easy to use, creates custom album recommendations by location, time and date. When on vacation it knows and compiles them all together, on a evening out, it knows too. It’s phenomenally smart, BUT! Google has removed the ability to download the photos. I have multiple devices and use the app across them all, sometimes I download photos taken by other devices on a different device and do editing etc. Google allowed it before and now removed this feature!!! Also, iPhoto has the ability to recognise faces and tag people, you can search by name of person tagged and their photos will appear. With all the AI and ML power of google servers, why do we not have this feature yet??? Google is supposed to be the best, with features being TAKEN AWAY and other features competitors have makes google photos that far behind. Google, please, bring back the ability to download photos/videos and add the ability for facial recognition and tag with contacts..Version: 4.25

Irritating & non-intuitive :(Downloaded today... so far just irritated! :( It didn‘t give me options on which photos to backup, just uploaded everything & ran out of memory!!! I‘ve tried deleting lots of photos, which I didn‘t want uploaded, but it still tells me it‘s full! At one point I found the bin & deleted ~100 pictures, but now can‘t find bin to empty it again now I‘ve deleted more! It also appears to generate random „panoramas“, which I don‘t want, presumably fill the available memory, & sends me messages which interrupt my work. It is not intuitive & I‘m not impressed, in spite of the recommendation from a very tech‘y friend :( I‘m going to back up onto my computer & my Terabyte drive instead. Old tech‘, but reliable & easier. I can control what transfers, keep it local & secure. Also I won‘t have to worry about losing data on a cloud or security of my photos ;).Version: 5.39

Google photo not grouping faces despite starting from zeroBrowsing through the community supports, I think I might just be one out of the many disappointed users who aren’t able to use the face grouping function despite following all the recommendations, including starting from zero (off/on the face grouping, uninstalling/reinstalling, login/logout etc). So, for me, face grouping worked for me for a while initially, I would say probably around 1-2 years. Problems sort of began when I started editing the recognised faces as some were recognised wrongly. Then, I could no longer see face recognition for that person. Google photo still kinda continued to recognise other faces, until around 2022 it stop recognise faces in new photos. Some community advice suggest that the issue might event be “random”, because some of these fixing methods work for some people but not all. I think there aren’t many entries in the support page on this topic any more - has Google fixed the issue (I suspect not because there’s still no solution reported in these pages), or perhaps we just lose hope (last community support update was in 2019??) Hopefully someone from Google photo support team could give us an updated report on this. It could be that it’s a bug and working on fixing the issue, just hope someone can fix this because if it worked, it would be a very useful function to have..Version: 6.9

Keep it freeWe loved this app. It was one of unique services. Please keep it free like now. If it needs payment then there are lots of alternatives out there..Version: 5.19

I’m cryingI downloaded google photos so save storage due to the fact that I have a lot of photos. Once it properly downloaded it deleted over 1000 of my photos and videos and I do not know how to get them back. I have a very personal video of a loved one who battled cancer and lost his voice and I had a video of him singing. That footage is now lost to this app. Please if you have anyway to help me contact me. Any help will be much appreciated!.Version: 4.16

Won’t be free as of June 2021Google did the classic bait and switch. They got us hooked on the free photo backup, then forces us to pay..Version: 5.38

Great service when it was unlimited.It’s nearly impossible to de-link Google photos from iPhone once you’ve synced them together. That was all well and good when they offered unlimited storage but now that I’m trying to delete photos from Google photos, they keep deleting from my iPhone. I’m not particularly tech savvy so it has been a total nightmare trying to figure this out. It’s really frustrating and I wish they made it easier to separate the two systems..Version: 5.76

Great when you’re on a budget, but leaves a lot to be desiredThere’s a lot I like and a lot that frustrates me about this app since I started to pay for it. To start with, I can only edit photos with the enhanced edits (dynamic, color pop, etc.) on my iPhone. It doesn’t give me the option on my iPad or Chromebook (using the app or using the website), it would be great to use the larger screen when editing. I’ve tried all the fixes suggested online. Also, when I use the enhanced edits, I only get the option to save the photo as a copy. If I want the edited copy in the album, I have to add that version to the album and then delete the original (since I don’t want the same picture twice). It’s very frustrating. When I don’t use enhanced edits I get the option for Save or Save Copy, why isn’t that an option for both? I would change my review to 5 stars if those were fixed. Lastly, since the last update the app crashes way too frequently when I’m editing. It used to every once in a while, now it does every 15 or so photos. All that being said, while I like Google Photos, I prefer Adobe Lightroom. But when you’re on a budget, this is a great option for a lot of storage and enhanced edit features. Lightroom is easier to use, but costs a lot more with only a fifth of the storage space..Version: 6.17

Can’t get rid of unneeded photos even though there’s a delete option, not organized, uses my storageI admit it’s good for keeping photos backed up but I have another issue. There is a delete option for pictures and videos. I’m able to delete them, go into my trash, and delete forever but when I close the app and go back in, they’re all back. I’ve restarted my phone, made sure the app was updated, look up it up and couldn’t find anything. Pretty much everything I could do, I did. Point is, I’m in desperate need of storage and deleting thousands of really, unneeded photos is probably the best way to go. I don’t have many apps, just a lot of photos. My photos automatically back up so I don’t have a chance to go through them before they’re saved to my email. The app isn’t organized and nor are my photos. I go in to find photos that I may need and can’t find them. I’m sitting for hours before I find anything. I take lots of photos. I do a lot of photography and am one of those people who loves taking photos instead of living in the moment. I’m contemplating on just deleting the app and going on to use something else. Plus, it’s really buggy and slow. It’s constantly asking to “make space” and delete the pictures in my photo library. When I say no, it just keeps popping up every 5 to 10 minutes. Apple users, honestly just use photo stream. It’s a waste..Version: 4.3

No way to un-sync my device - used up all my storageI downloaded the google photos app with the intention of being able to quickly upload certain photos from my iphone to google photos to access from my chromebook. However, when I opened the app for the first time, it asked me if I wanted to sync my device photos with the app. I said yes since the app wouldn’t work otherwise, and it’s backed up ALL of my device photos onto my google account. This has very easily used up all of the storage in my google account since I have such a large number of photos, with the only solution they recommend being to BUY MORE storage. Since my icloud photos are now synched to google photos, when I delete photos from google photos, they delete from my device too. There is an option to only delete from my device, but what if I want to only get rid of them from google photos? There is no such option. There seems to be no way to un-sync my device from google photos, or to just delete photos from google photos and not from my icloud account. I currently am unable to send emails or save google docs because of all of my storage being used up, and I’m not interested in purchasing more storage. It seems to be a trap they’ve purposely set. I’d appreciate help from someone in helping me to remove the photos from google photos without risking deleting them all for good from icloud..Version: 6.20

Don’t get this unless you want to pay for extra spaceDon’t get this app unless you plan on buying extra space. Once you reach the max space, google holds your other google products hostage (INCLUDING EMAIL - will stop you from sending or receiving mail) until you buy more space or make space. Email and photo storage should be totally separate. I rely on my email for work and other important things so its very annoying that google does this..Version: 5.76

Terrible UII’ve been using this app for a year and a half, after we set up a catch-all album for photos of our newborn son. I didn’t realize it would become the massive shared album it is today, but after uploading many, many photos I have a few points as to why this app drives me absolutely crazy. First, it HATES Apple. I have an iPhone, so sue me. Baby daddy has a Pixel so this was an easier compromise (I can use Google Photos but he couldn’t use iCloud). I can’t hold and click to preview photos, and more importantly videos, which is a huge downer!!! Anyone who takes photos of kids knows there are a huge amount of blurry ones, or two almost identically cute ones except in one of them your kid is like squinting their left eye or something. I want to be able to preview the photos and pick only the good ones! And I don’t always remember which videos are album worthy—it would be so nice to be able to preview those as well. Another aspect of this app I don’t like is that it takes you directly to the comments feed of the shared album. I’d rather see the pictures first, instead of having to click yet another button to take me to the shared album. The UI just is not very streamlined and a lot of things are redundant, or seem like they are but end up being totally different. Does my review confuse you? That’s how I feel trying to navigate this app!.Version: 6.12

Used to be freeUsed to be free, deserves 1 star for breaking customer trust..Version: 5.49

Google photosGreat app appreciate it, would like to do more to save space, but to complicated & hard I’d lose photos & wouldn’t be able to recover them when I needed to. Modern technology is all for the younger generations these phones are to complex for people in their 60’s & 70’s Even the word google is a child’s word not a mature adults word, in my entire life I have probably only said that word in a sentence a couple of times when I was a teenager. Even the stupid nickname at the end you can’t send unless you have a nickname and guess what every nickname you can think of is taken so you’ve gotta put something ridiculous... this is exactly what I mean about technology.Version: 5.22

Good photo viewer but frustrating limitationsThe photo viewing experience is pretty good, it generally loads photos quickly as you scroll through, and I like the album features, including the ability to add text sections to the album. For very large camera photos loading takes a bit too long, so I generally end up re-saving my Fuji photos with higher compression before uploading. The interface also works well with simple swipe up to view photo details etc. My biggest complaint is that you can’t prevent videos from uploading on iPhone if you turn on sync. This results in the app taking a long time to backup and if you record large lengthy videos at 4k, it’ll soon make it unusable for backups. My second issue is that there’s no way to keep what’s on Google photos in sync with what’s on my PC, so if I delete a photo online, I have to then delete it again on my PC, which is so time consuming when sorting out which shots to keep. The end result is I only now use Google photos for sharing albums with my family, I’d like to use it for all my photos but with these issues I can’t make it work for me..Version: 6.38

Can’t export or delete photos from google photos without deleting it on your phone photo library.I used to think like everyone how convenient this app was to take space out from my phone. But now it seems like when I delete photos from google photos it also deletes the photo straight on my phone library as well. It also uses up my Drive space which was why I had to delete them.. but it also automatically deletes photos on my phone when I do so?? I also can’t seem to export the photos from google to my phone without sharing to someone? It’s so not user friendly and it shows that Google wants to take control of your photos!? Which is also really frustrating about how it connects to your phone and I can’t seem to find a way to disconnect google photos from my phone entirely. Not just un-sync it. Entirely. It’s impossible. They still have the control to keep your photos. This app honestly does not deserve a 4.7 stars rating..Version: 4.45

PainfulI was convinced to upload my photos to google....I have a lot! I’m not young so have accrued a lot over the years, I have had photos stored everywhere, Mega, one drive, Dropbox, you name it....my dream was to have one place to store them, I thought this was the ideal option. Downloading was fine ...relatively quick and easy considering I had a few approx 60k pics/videos ....and finally everything in one place., but when it came for me to access them .....I could have thrown it out the window, frustration didn’t cut it. I wanted to organise and and restructure my photos.....problem is I can not get to my photos.....as every time I try to access anything older than 2019 it’s chugging away so hard trying to cope with me scrolling it just continuously bounces me back to photos in 2019 it lets me glimpse photos before then but in a few seconds it just bounces me to 2019. My partner said I was being too impatient I should give it 10mins or so to down load the photos ...I gave it 30mins it did the same thing! He then said make specific searches ...so I searched for pictures with ‘mountains’ it still kept bouncing me back to 2019 photos ..... so what is the point of having terrific storage with no actual access?????? Not Happy!.Version: 5.22

Adequate but frustratingThe app works fine. Editing photos works good but occasionally editing causes photos to go out of focus. The feature that places photos in mementoes albums is not a feature I would use but there is no choice in the app. Photos captured in the memories album are impossible to edit. It seems that photos are hard to locate and when doubled photos are deleted they seem to take the undetected photo to the bin as well. When you attempt to restore from the bin the restored photo is almost impossible to locate among all the other photos to make sure that they have actually been restored. Photos are important to people and they would like to be certain that some photos are not deleted by mistake..Version: 6.40

Google photosI do not like google photos controlling the photos destiny that I take with my I-phone. Very hard to download photos to my laptop photo library. Not happy with this app at all.Version: 5.22

Currently really glitchy with albums and shared albumsI've actually become a little underwhelmed with Google photos of late. Given that it is effectively a paid subscription (if you have GOOGLE ONE or more) by pretty much the largest internet company in the world it's now pretty dated. Photo editing features within app aren't but should be Snapseed level of detail and OMG the current glitches on iPhone with albums??!!! I've had to creat the same album multiple times as it just vanishes randomly? I've shared albums with my wife - these shared albums are not intuitive to find. Why isn't there a shared tab along the bottom? Kind of like Google drive. The fact that the link with WhatsApp/third party apps doesn't let you share specific chats is a missed opportunity too. Would be great if you could save photos/bids from specific chats rather than all or nothing (avoid random stupid memes from mates ending up amongst proper photos!) There's a lot good about this but also a lot that can still be done. Personally, the current three tabs along the bottom is annoying and really missed SHARED tab..Version: 5.16

Completely pointlessI got this so I could create shared albums for my newborn - which is super easy and hassle free unlike other apps. However, if picture is added to the shared album is not one you have uploaded yourself, you cannot edit the photo. You can save and download and then upload and then edit - but then you have duplicates. What is the point in having a shared album that isn’t shared? If it was called a “limited shared album” it would make more sense. Why have you set it up this way? If I edit photos on the shared album & I was one the one who uploaded it, the original photo stays exactly the same, not the one that is shared, therefore there is no reason to not have me be able to edit a photo someone else has “SHARED” because their original photo will not be edited, and if there is a reason some people don’t want this then you simply add in an option that photos that are chosen by whoever cannot be edited - you do not however set up a brilliant platform like this and then hamstring in such a stupid way that it renders it useless! What a waste of an app! Incredibly disappointing - will update if this is modified/updated..Version: 6.40

Limitations vs good featuresLove being able to store & back up but unless I am missing tricks moving photos to albums is laborious- one by one? Albums seem to allow the same photo to be added multiple times. I can’t see how to put an album in date of photo order no matter when added to an album. It seems chaotic and now and again I get alerts to rotate pics or it ID’a a face that maybe should be added to an album. Random. I do like to look back, collage and enhanced photo suggestions but they are less important.Version: 4.50

Great features but some failingsThe assistant is a great idea and provides interesting stylised photos. The backup solution from my phone is great and better than iCloud backup. My only issue is the consistency and sync across apple photos and Google photos. When I edit or delete live photos in the native app, Google photos doesn't retroactively update which photos to sync or delete. This means I have to do manual cleanup in Google photos. I need to edit live photos in the native app because Google photos doesn't provide all the editing features that the native version does. Also, when I try to view live motion in the Google app there is always a delay and it feels clumsy. Fix the clumsy Ux and the double cleanup/sync work and you'll have 5 stars!.Version: 3.20.0

Wants access to all photosNo way am I giving Google access to all photos for obvious reasons. They have removed the ability to be selective what permissions to use. App deleted. Google photo cloud storage cleared out..Version: 5.49

Like a virus on my phoneI hate google photos. I was really excited to try it. I backed up all my photos from my phone to Google photos. Unfortunately I couldn’t scroll through my photos to see any of them. There’s apparently a glitch where when scrolling through photos the app forces you to scroll all the way back to the top so you can’t ever look through your photos. This continued even after I upgraded my phone and deleted and re installed the app. Nothing fixed it. Finally, I decided to take all my photos from google photos back on to my phone so I can upload them to iCloud instead. Of course when you try to do that often you don’t even get the option to even save photos to your device/phone! And when this happens you have to restart the app. And then when you finally do download images from google photos to your phone in the slowest way possible so the app doesn’t crash the photos are out of order and a complete disorganized mess of photos. Oh, and I’m now trying to delete photos from google photos and it is also deleting those photos from my iCloud even though I disabled syncing. So I’m STILL trying to figure out how to delete photos from google photos (and be done with google photos altogether). I’ve never even written a review for an app in my life but this app is terribly painful to use and even more painful to break up with. I regret ever using google photos. Hours of my life wasted trying to recover my own photos. Useless..Version: 5.19


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