moving from high quality to original - Should it be this hard?

@Pete 3974

The viewing with Google Photos app for Android is different from the one with a browser (Chrome).

G-Photos is a cloud storage service for images and videos, and you can see the all cloud data (only uploaded files) via browser interface.

However, G-Photos app for mobile can access both files in the cloud and on the device, and view both at the same time, because it is working on the Android while sign-in to Google account.

Usually, when you delete a photo from G-Photos on your browser, G-Photos app for mobile in sync will delete a same photo from the device. You should have seen the message on your browser that it will b

e deleted from synced devices.

When you went to Google photos on your Android after deleting everything, - why all of the photos were still there might be one of the following possibilities, which are 'Backup and Sync' was already off or the sync had not yet been executed.

If you delete them all from G-Photos app on your phone by tapping a trash icon, all will be deleted from your phone gallery even if 'Backup and Sync' has already been switched off. That is because G-Photos app working on device can access the device storage via Android at full time.

So - I'm now adding all of my photos back from my Mac to G Photos using backup and sync, at Original quality.

Once this is complete, if I turn back up and sync on on my phone, and restore all of my photos to the gallery from the phone trash - will that give me duplicates, or will I then have fixed everything?

Thanks again

@Pete 3974

What app do you use to see your trash? Is that surely a trash on phone storage in which your photos on the phone stay? - Commonly Android has no trash bin on the system except for special models. Which means the photos deleted from device storage cannot be restored = the gallery app cannot show them again.

When you use G Photos app to see your trash, it should be in the cloud. If so, those photos will not be restored to the gallery app that can access only device storage, but will be restored to the Library of Google Photos. However, the sync system of G-Photos app cannot download automatically the photos stored in the cloud to the device storage, of course, also photos that you are adding from your Mac in Original quality size.

Firstly, you should check the trash on the web of Google Photos before you turn back up and sync on on my phone.

If you restore all of your photos from the web trash, that will not give duplicates to the Library of Google Photos in addition to Original quality files, even if those photos stayed in a trash bin are compressed files with the option of upload size "High Quality". That is because Google Photos consider both photos as the same image with the same unique ID.

However, when you access your album archive page (https://get.google.com/albumarchive/), you will see the duplicates as below screenshot, it means Google will keep the both photo in the Library and the trash, but does not show duplicates at the Library.

2 photos in the album archive page have the same ID and linked, so if you delete a photo shown in the Library of Google Photos, the pair on the album archive page will be deleted. It's better not to put unwanted photos in the trash back into your library of Google Photos, as this can be confusing.

we have to be very careful when talking about device trash. If photos are deleted from the web with Backup & sync disabled they do not get deleted from the device.

Subsequently deleting from the device DOES create a pseudo trash on the app which is actually in the app Data and is as temporary as the app data.

I don't know what will happen with the scenario you describe so will do some tests to try and replicate what will happen,

Peter

@PeteranDi, I heard the trash storage as temporary cache that Google Photos app can have are around 1.5GB. There seems to be no guarantee that all photos will remain in the local trash.

Like PeteranDi mentioned, If photos are deleted from the web with Backup & sync disabled they do not get deleted from the device. However, @Pete 3974 deleted photos again by using a trash icon on the app for the phone after deleting on the web. It was a start of trouble.

I can't try it myself because I already abandoned Android, I expect PeteranDi's detailed test results.

@Pete 3974

What is written in the first half (from the first line to step 6) is what I had already guessed and concluded (finished). What I expected is that step 7 and the following are the points to be focused and checked.

Firstly, you couldn't put locally all your photos more than a few gigabytes in a temporary trash with limited space, so not all would be available in the gallery.

Secondly, @PeteranDi emptied the web trash and restored the local trash, and then enables Backup & sync on the app in the last step 10.

However, @Pete 3974 said,

What @Pete 3974 needs to know is that if you have Backups and Syncs enabled in the app in state that photos left in the web trash, then the photos you see in the app will also include the web trash.

If you restore it, it will not be duplicated in the Google Photo library (the original uploaded from the Mac will be kept by ID). Of course the photos restored from device trash will not be uploaded, as @PeteranDi reported. But those restored from web trash will be duplicated in the album archive. So it's better to organize the trash on the web.