Problems deleting (Google's?) photos from Samsung Galaxy Note 4

[Midahed]

I've searched high and low for a solution, but nothing I've tried makes any difference....

I'm trying to transfer the pictures on my phone over to my Apple Mac using the Apple Photos app. It connects OK and will transfer the photos, but they're all mixed-up with a load of stock photos that, I believe, originated somewhere in Google. It takes ages the sift through 350+ pictures in order to find the ones I've taken. These stock pictures DON'T appear in Gallery, or in the Google Photos app, but they are always present when I try to use the Apple Photos app to move pictures onto my Mac.

My Note 4 is running the latest Marshmallow OS and all installed apps are up to date. Similarly on my Mac - it runs OSX El Capitan and all installed apps are up to date.

The problem seems to be that these unwanted pictures are somewhere on the phone and Apple's Photoa app is deciding to load them up when connected.

I've tried clearing the Gallery app cache and data, and I've tried clearing the Galaxy's system cache. Any sort of sync of photos with Google is turned off. Nothing makes any difference - those damn photos always appear on the Mac, but they're nowhere to be seen on the phone's Gallery app.

It looks like they've been left on the phone somewhere and the Apple Photos app treats them as if they were pictures that I've taken. When I connect the phone to the Mac, initially nothing happens until I change the "Use USB for" option from "transferring media files" to "transferring images", so it looks like Apple doesn't support MTP, but I don't see why this should make any difference.....

Does anyone have any ideas about how to fix this. I know I could wipe the whole phone, but I don't want to do this unless its the last option.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[SpookDroid]

What do these pictures look like? They might be Wallpapers, browser cache/history images, app images, etc. These are usually hidden from the Gallery (usually by adding a .nomedia file to each folder), but if Apple Photos pulls each and every image file available without regarding .nomedia folders, then that's why you'd end up with these extra pictures.

Not sure how Apple Photos works, though, so can't give any more input on this one other than maybe trying to use direct file transfer to your computer and then importing into Apple Photos or just backing up to Google Photos and downloading to your computer from there.

 

[Midahed]

Thanks for your suggestions. The pictures are a mishmash of people, views, famous locations around the world, building interiors, etc. They're not even particularly good quality pictures! Some are plain blocks of colour, others look like bits of logos. There's even an image of a battery icon showing 68% charge....

As you say, it appears that Apple Photos is looking in places where it shouldn't. I've tried a couple of other apps like Apple's Image Capture and it does the same thing.

I'll take a look to see if they're coming from a .nomedia folder but, as you suggest, the simplest solution is to download onto the Mac from Google Photos.

Thanks again for your ideas.

Mike