Sep 16, 2018
HOW TO DELETE PHOTOS IN GOOGLE PHOTOS WITHOUT DELETING IT ON MY DEVICE?
My Samsung S7 has been automatically synced to Google Photos so
every time I took a photo it automatically sync and back up to my Google
Photos account. Now, I am trying to delete some of the unwanted or not
so important photos saved or backed up in Google Photos to free up some
space since it took 3.17GB of data. However, when I try to delete some
of the photos in Google Photos it also deletes the photos saved in my
phone/device. (FYI. I would like to automatically save and back up all
the photos in my device to Google Photos so every time I accidentally
delete a picture in my device I could always look back in Google Photos,
I know this could be hard or confusing just want to ask some
suggestions though)
1. How can I changed this? or How can I delete photos in Google Photos that will NOT delete in my phone/device?
Thanks in advance to those who can help me.
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Last edited Feb 11, 2019
Nov 1, 2020
This very long thread becomes almost unusable without having some "Recommended answers" on top. Because the subject is important to many, I collected some suggestions. Comments are welcome: I will edit this post when incorrect or when other (simple) solutions are posted.
This are some suggestions to delete from Google cloud without deleting from your device, without turning Backup and sync permanently off :
- Copy (or move) the pic into a different non-synced folder in the Gallery or another File manager.
- My best workaround has been to make a copy of the pic on the device and save it into a different non-synced folder. Then delete it on google (and thus the synced folder on my device). After that I can move it back to my regular pics folder so that it can backup at the resolution I originally intended. It's a real pain though, so I do it as infrequently as possible.
- The following simple option seems to work for me (janvb).
I checked that with Backup and sync ON photos in the same folder are deleted immediately from device when deleting from the cloud.- Turn Backup and sync OFF
- Delete the photo from Google Photos web version https://photos.google.com/
The photo is NOT deleted from the device because B&S are turned OFF - Turn B&S ON again: the photo was NOT deleted from the device
- I set my camera to save to the SD card. Google Photos backs up that folder to the cloud, and I can clean things out of my cloud storage without affecting the SD card.
- Note that this depends on the access authorization to the SD card in Android settings > Apps > Google Photos. When full access is denied, deleting in the Google Photos app on my phone (Samsung A40) says "Cannot remove n items - Google Photos has no rights to delete items from your SD card. Go to Gallery to delete." When I delete in the web app on a computer, it deletes the web copy. On the phone I see it disappear, and after a second it is replaced by the device copy on the SD card.
- Michael Zehr (Feb 2019) said: "I checked and now it's one permission setting for read and write to both internal and SD card.". But it still works for me. You will have to check this for yourself. Let us know how it goes.
- Shawna Seto wrote (May 2019):
I found that the photos that I moved to my sd card won't get deleted when I remove them from google photos. It will ask me for permission to access my sd card and I just decline.
Last edited Feb 1, 2021
Diamond Product Expert janvb recommended this
All Replies (297)
Sep 16, 2018
Once an image captured on your phone (or tablet or similar device) is backed up to the cloud in Google Photos, you can safely remove that image from the phone (or similar device) without deleting it from the cloud or Albums (including Shared Albums) but only in one of the following three ways:
- Free Up Space within the Google Photos App: found by selecting Menu
in upper-left of screen, then Settings
.
- Delete Device Copy within the Google Photos App: found in Albums view of Google Photos App, reached by selecting images in Albums that appear below Photos on Device and then by tapping More Options More Options
on the right hand side of blue Selected bar that appears).
- Delete from Camera Gallery outside the Google Photos App.
Free Up Space will remove all images (photos or videos) from your phone that have already been backed up to Google Photos (photos.google.com); Delete Device Copy will do the same but with selected images; deletion from Camera Gallery software, or any software other than the Google Photos App, will have no effect on images backed up to Google Photos.
By contrast, for images backed to Google Photos after being captured on your phone, if you simply Delete from within your Google Photos App, by tapping Trash
, e.g., the images will be deleted from the cloud as well and will no longer be available in Google Photos (unless restored from the Trash within 60 days of deletion).
, e.g., the images will be deleted from the cloud as well and will no longer be available in Google Photos (unless restored from the Trash within 60 days of deletion).The specific instructions above are for an Android phone or tablet, but IOS devices offer essentially the same options in essentially the same places, so these instructions should serve for an iPhone or iPad as well.
Hope this helps.
Last edited Nov 19, 2018
Jan 3, 2021
Jan 3, 2021
"I've tried everything and nothing works."
Did you delete the photos in the web app https://photos.google.com/? That's the only way to be sure that you delete the uploaded copy: the phone also shows photos that are ON the device and not uploaded.
Jan 24, 2021
Jan 28, 2021
THE ANSWER IS NO YOU CANNOT.
Let's here A story - One's Upon A Time, I lost All My Photos - Thanks to Google
Now here's my story
I had set my backup quality setting to "ORIGINAL" that back ups the photos to its original size and the resolution.There will be time when google photos will start giving you warning that you are running out of storage so either buy their plan or reduce the quality of storage to "HIGH QUALITY" which is less than your "ORIGINAL" quality and I agreed surprisingly all the photos and my videos got compressed from 14GB to somewhere around 4-5GB that was almost 10GB of lossy compression Google made for me, well I was't surprised then as that's what I agreed to but one day I decided to move the backup to my 2nd google account, I stopped the backup from my primary account and surprisingly the second account backed up all the photos that were present in the phone and was already backed up on my primary account, here Google won't give you an option to select what photos you want to backup.
Now coming to the most interesting part -
There were same photos and videos backed up on my two different accounts.One day I decided to not keep backing up photos and videos on my secondary and let's switch to the primary one again.I stopped backup and sync from the secondary Id and deleted all the photos that were already present in primary account.
AND HERE COMES THE MOST SHOCKING PART -
Even though I stopped the the backup and sync on the secondary id the photos I deleted on from that account were somehow still linked with my phone's gallery and were automatically deleted.
The backup present on the Primary and Secondary ids of those photos were of low quality as compared to the original one clicked from my Phone's camera.
AND HERE IS THE STORY HOW I LOST ALL MY PHOTOS FROM MY PHONE THAT WERE OF ORIGINAL QUALITY.
Feb 1, 2021
"I stopped backup and sync from the secondary Id and deleted all the photos that were already present in primary account."
The question is now HOW you did that. When you do this in https://photos.google.com/with Backup and sync turned OFF on the phone, the phone copy should NOT be removed.
P.S. This thread becomes much too long ...
You may start a new one and copy your post (edited when needed)
Feb 1, 2021