- 84.5LEGITIMACY SCORE
- 89.0SAFETY SCORE
- 4+CONTENT RATING
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Google Photos App Complaints & User Negative Comments 2023
Google Photos app received 79 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ Stressful with the most important imagesNo idea what this app does really! With no real help to specific problems. I had dates all mixed up so tried to delete them and start again - Result it deleted from my iPhone too! Luckily iPhone has a deleted box to catch them and restore! Thank you iPhone and apple. By deleting on google photos, should not allow you to delete them off the devise you clowns! Also tried to update and they have backed up again but now not showing! Not happy Google! Not happy at all! No clear instructions. No clear buttons to say add photos, delete photos (off google app only), no clear re arrange step! I nearly lost some important personal photos that needed storing and organising until I have a storage devise. More stress than it is worth! I thought it was brilliant until you need to work with them. I am a small ripple in a big ocean but I hope I reach someone who can make a difference!.Version: 3.11.0
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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 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
✓ 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
✓ Requires access to all photos to work.If you want this reason only to see shared albums with you you need to give it access to all of your photos in order for it to even turn on. This is a ridiculous requirement which only serves to use your photos to my name for data..Version: 5.49
✓ 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
✓ Nice interface but requires full access to all photos!Good interface and the fastest online photo viewer I’ve tried. Photos show at a decent quality and it’s quick to navigate around, I also like the memories widget. However, you’re unable to even view photos stored on Google without giving it full access to all your phone photos, even selective access to a limited number of photos isn’t good enough for this app! Even once I do give it access to all photos there’s no way to control what iOS photo albums get backed up, it’s all photos or nothing, making this feature useless. Why would I want all my screenshots, snaps and numerous WhatsApp photos other people have posted uploaded to my Google account, it’s just more junk to sort out later! Also no simple way to delete photos from Google without it deleting the local phone copy if it was previously backed up with the app. Could be great but these limitation are frustrating and limit it’s usefulness..Version: 5.22
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ Constant signing in. 😡I originally gave Google 5 stars and was happy with the service, until... Now when I’m transferring photos and videos to the app from ‘photos’ (on my iPhone), I’m asked every 10 minutes to sign in with my Apple ID; it IS EVERY 10 MINUTES! I have screen shots to verify it. If my screen shuts down, I have to re enter it, too. I don’t have a problem with one sign in at the start, I’d even expect that. What happened to the app I gave 5 stars? This is just frustrating and pointless, why is it happening. No forums can help me, as the only one to ask the same question, has no answer (and that was a Google forum!)..Version: 4.52
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ A lot to like, but fallen from greatnessRight from the word go, Google photos was always going to be in the shadow of Picasa, and whilst it has proven to be a very effective way of viewing and storing your memories, it lacks so many features that we came to love Picasa for, and really doesn’t stand out from Apples own photo app. 1) Not able to geo-tag photos - No I know that most smart phones add GPS information to the image, but not everyone uses a smart phone, some of us, use a ‘real’ camera 😱 2) Face detection and being able to select and add a ‘person’ or ‘Pet’ when the auto detect system has missed them - again, I know that some people may not see this as a game changer, some might not even know it exists, but really found it useful in Picasa. Finally - The decisions to break apart ‘Drive’ and ‘Photo’s’ - Albums are good, but Folders are better, especially when dealing with large numbers of files. So on reflection, you’re not going to go wrong with this product, and if you’re ‘new’ to Google photos, then you are not going to miss any of the ‘good old days’.. but that said, why use this over Apple Photos, unless your just interested in the ‘lower resolution’ image storage..Version: 5.0
✓ Used to be freeUsed to be free, deserves 1 star for breaking customer trust..Version: 5.49
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ Wants full access to photosNo way I grant access to all photos. And the app won’t work without it ... uninstall.Version: 5.15
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ Extremely PoorThe lastest is that the app refuses to display photos in time and date order. Used to be able to photograph adjoining photos - cant now because whole photos don’t appear = so poor I will try to find another way to take my photos - will investigate Quant and failing that see what experts say. Getting worse, many photos a blurred, the duplicate photo on the Apple app is not blurred. Blurry photos continue. Getting worse. Cannot believe something is not done to improve Google Photos. One of my iPads keeps telling me my storage is nearly full, despite archiving most of my photos and wants me to buy more storage at a huge monthly rate. The site does not say how I can avoid this annoying pop up. Upgraded rating slightly as after wading through numerous sources discovered how to stop being told my storage was near full and to pay for more storage.Version: 6.25
✓ 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: 5.47
✓ 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
✓ 36 messages to google - not one responseI am paying the top tier amount for 2TB of data storage to run a full backup of my photos from my phone - which requires only 450GB… the app crashes continually.. and over the last 3 months I have contacted google 36 times - every time I try to sync my phone and it crashes - and I have had NOT ONE RESPONSE. My app is kept updated with every upgrade and I am getting charged the top amount and yet my sync won’t go past 140GB with months of trying on different bandwidths on different connections, with having deleted and reloaded, upgraded and have lodged many many messages of feedback, complaint and request for support..Version: 6.4
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ Fantastic app but has its problemsFantastic app but boy can if frustrate you I delete a photo only to find next time I log on it’s back 🤯😳 it drives me mad and also where is this bin 🗑 as when I delete a photo it go’s in a magic bin. Looked all over the app including the settings and there is no bin anywhere if it’s like the iPhone that has a recently deleted section at least let us see them. Right that’s the bad part done ✅ and out the way and I would give 5 starts if it wasn’t for this frustration but on a Plus note this app is very good and has some fantastic things to offer like the assistance that will make pics and videos for you to save it also improves bad snaps and makes em really quiet good. The best thing is it has everything on it and takes no room up on my phone. Well done google. Cure the bin section and I will be back to re rate this app Thanks from the google pic police 🚨 lol 😂.Version: 4.8
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ Cast icon disappearedRecent update no longer show cast icon. Connected to same wifi..Version: 4.23
✓ Love it and hate itVery good backs up my photos and saves them from unreliable I iCloud after I had lots deleted off my phone by iCloud and luckily most were backed up on google. However, this sharing idea is a really good one and super useful as me and my friend went on a trip recently and can’t share our photos through iCloud because it doesn’t work (as per with Apple) and so thought to use this google share fracture which is great for about 50 photos that actually upload whereas most wont upload and it they do it won’t ever allow you to add more to an album I selected 200 photos to upload and it comes up with a loading bar saying ‘uploading 78 items’ that the bar never even moves and the items never upload. Fault in the app and I’m very disappointed about it..Version: 3.15.0
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ Google promisesWell this didn’t pan out, with them going to paid service. Not going to work long term.Version: 5.19
✓ 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
✓ Google changed their policyGoogle is changing their policy of storing the photo for free, I feel cheated.Version: 5.19
✓ 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
✓ 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
✓ From my experience i do not recommend this incase you dont want to use this app amymoreHi, i would like to say if you do not think you would use this app after wards i suggest you to not download it, before i say anything im still trying to delete everything on google apps, i no longer want to use google apps as it is taking my storage up, it will not let me remove my account or delete my account of that app, if i do my account will delete off everything. I have regretted to download this app, i cannot stop backing up my photos and them being synced, if i remove something off that app it will automatically delete off my data whoich i do not want, if i delete the app it will still sync my photos, if anyone knows how to do this with out any other of my data being removed from my phone please let me know i will be checking reviews alot. Thankyou..Version: 5.49
✓ 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
✓ 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
🙂 Google Photos Positive Reviews
Google Photos works most of the time. If it is not working for you, we recommend you excersise some patience and retry later or contact Google Photos.
⛔ Google Photos Problems
