Turn Google Photos on or off for users

If you're an administrator of Google accounts for an organization, you can control who uses Google Photos from their account. You can turn on the Google Photos service for everyone in your organization, specific organizational units, or specific groups.

Users signed in with their Google Workspace account with the service turned on can use all the services offered by Google Photos. Users signed in with their Google Workspace account where Google Photos has been turned off can still use the service, but only in limited capacity similar to a user signed out of their account. For example, if the Google Photos is set to Off, users will not lose complete access to Photos mobile applications, but are no longer able to perform remote actions. 

Control who uses Google Photos in your organization

Before you begin: To turn a service on or off for certain users, put their accounts in an organizational unit (to control access by department) or add them to an access group (to allow access for users across or within departments).

  1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

    Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).

  2. In the Admin console, go to Menu and then Appsand thenAdditional Google Servicesand thenGoogle Photos.
  3. Click Service status.
  4. To turn a service on or off for everyone in your organization, click On for everyone or Off for everyone, and then click Save.

  5. (Optional) To turn a service on or off for an organizational unit:
    1. At the left, select the organizational unit.
    2. To change the Service status, select On or Off.
    3. Choose one:
      • If the Service status is set to Inherited and you want to keep the updated setting, even if the parent setting changes, click Override.
      • If the Service status is set to Overridden, either click Inherit to revert to the same setting as its parent, or click Save to keep the new setting, even if the parent setting changes.
        Note: Learn more about organizational structure.
  6. To turn on a service for a set of users across or within organizational units, select an access group. For details, go to Use groups to customize service access.

Next steps

Learn to use Google Photos at the Google Photos Help Center.

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