Picasa Album photo storage

[nelhop]

While completely out of range for WiFi I discovered that my Picasa Albums are available for viewing as slideshows in the Gallery App. I was totally surprised as I think the photos would have to be stored somewhere on the Nexus 7 for that to happen. Does anyone know where the photos are stored on the Nexus 7? Or am I touching the cloud without WiFi?

 

[Ldesjardin]

Yeah, I have wondered the same thing. Wonder why you can see all those pix without wifi.

 

[makaroni]

I believe Picasa is an affiliate of Google so it syncs and shows your Picasa pics through the gallery because of your tablet being associated with your Gmail account. I don't think they're actually stored in the Nexus anywhere though because when I hit options in my Quickpic app gallery and tap "view by content on device", those Picasa albums disappear.

My GS3 sleeps in the bed and I make my girlfriend sleep on the couch

 

[tr-1]

I think it's sdcard/Pictures/cache/com.google.android.googlephotos

Looks like they may be in some format other than .jpeg, etc

 

[MJKearney]

As tr-1 indicated, those photos are in a temporary cache, and are encoded so that only Google's Gallery app can read them. They don't show up in an app like QuickPic because of the special encoding, similar to the music downloaded from Google Music for offline listening can only be played using the Google Music app.

If for some reason you don't want your online Google photos to automatically download to the cache, I think you can do this by disabling auto syncing. In Gallery, go to the menu, then tap Settings, then tap Google Photos Sync is On. The Sync window will pop up. Don't uncheck the Auto-sync App Data box. Instead, tap your Gmail account name. This brings you to the complete sync settings menu (you can also get here through the Android settings menu). Scroll down the list to Google Photos and uncheck the box. Your online Google photos will no longer be automatically downloaded to the cache of your N7 (at least that's my understanding).

If you always want certain online photos available on your N7, then go the the Gallery menu and tap Make Available Offline. Then choose the online folders you want to always have available.

 

[makaroni]

You're right, it shows in gallery but not quickpic. I stand corrected

My GS3 sleeps in the bed and I make my girlfriend sleep on the couch

 

[nelhop]

Thanks to tr-1 and MJKearney. Great explanations and advice. I did find the folder sdcard/Pictures/cache/com.google.android.googlephotos. There are 10 picasa folders, one has 42MB the others a few KB. I opened the largest folder and the items there are inscrutable as to identity. Clicking on any one gives the message "activity not found". Actually, I rather like being able to view the gallery without WiFi. It's a way to share your photos when out of range of WiFi. I also appreciate MJKearney's advice on how to manage the sync.
This forum has been such a big help to me! I seem to have a lot of questions and always get helpful answers.

 

[bigtroutz]

Thanks to tr-1 and MJKearney. Great explanations and advice. I did find the folder sdcard/Pictures/cache/com.google.android.googlephotos. There are 10 picasa folders, one has 42MB the others a few KB. I opened the largest folder and the items there are inscrutable as to identity. Clicking on any one gives the message "activity not found". Actually, I rather like being able to view the gallery without WiFi. It's a way to share your photos when out of range of WiFi. I also appreciate MJKearney's advice on how to manage the sync.
This forum has been such a big help to me! I seem to have a lot of questions and always get helpful answers.

don't you just hate the extreme lengths app writers have gone to make the products of their app useless for any other app ? copy protection, proprietary formats, renaming files, etc is total BS

 

[ketan_kunde]

I think it's sdcard/Pictures/cache/com.google.android.googlephotos

Looks like they may be in some format other than .jpeg, etc

Is it OK to delete this folder to free up space?

 

[MJKearney]

Probably, as it will just be created again.

 

[Annakin Miniatures]

They're actually .jpg files - they just don't have the .jpg extension, if you rename them with the .jpg they behave as you'd expect

 

[srkmagnus]

I don't think those files are the full size images of the photos. Likely, the photos are cache files to allow for faster load times of the photos. Photos will definitely reappear if you delete the folder or files.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[teeny52]

I am trying download the photos showing on my Samsung Galaxy S5 to my home pc. The photos are not located in either my card or phone DCIM folders or Picture folder. Where are they located? Please advise. Thanks.

 

[sandeepjoshi]

Picasa images displaying in Gallery [SOLVED] without any internet connection.

1. Go to Gallery (or available image viewer app) in any android device.

2. Click Options --> click on your email id --> click on remove account --> press ok.

close all apps (including minimized apps)

Problem Solved