Google Photo question

[cydewaze]

So, I'm trying to keep and use as many of the stock apps as possible on this phone and not install a replacement for everything. When I had my Samsung, I used QuickPic, but it always gave me permission issues when trying to delete pics, so I always had to have the stock app hanging around.

I like Google Photos, but it does one thing that annoys me. It shows EVERYTHING on the phone. I recently added a ton of wallpapers to my phone, and now they all show up in the gallery as pics. I don't want to have to scroll past 100 wallpapers to find a pic, so does anyone know if you can hide/exclude/ignore galleries or folders in Google Photos?

 

[Dan L2]

Are you viewing via albums instead of photos? From albums you can choose the specific folder you'd like to view and setup auto uploads from there as well. You can also hide folders from there as well.

 

[cydewaze]

Are you viewing via albums instead of photos? From albums you can choose the specific folder you'd like to view and setup auto uploads from there as well. You can also hide folders from there as well.

I was viewing as photos. If I view as albums, there's only the albums I've created. I just spent some time fiddling, and it's not terribly intuitive. I might try an aftermarket gallery after all, but I'll try to find one that'll back up to Google Photos.

 

[wordfool]

That's odd... I have added a bunch of wallpapers, contact photos etc. to the "Pictures" folder on the phone and they don't show up in the Google Photos app's "photos" stream. I can only see them if I go to "Device Folders" in the app's settings.

I agree that the app's not very intuitive, however. Thankfully it just worked as I wanted out of the box.

One potential solution is to put a '.nomedia' blank file in the folders you don't want to be scanned. That usually works, but is not the most elegant solution.

 

[daddyscooltv]

You might need to go into the settings of photos under device folders and tell it not upload the folder with the pics you don't want.. I have one in mine like that which is called onboard. it has a bunch of pics of my discover card app that I don't upload

 

[anon(847090)]

I was viewing as photos. If I view as albums, there's only the albums I've created. I just spent some time fiddling, and it's not terribly intuitive. I might try an aftermarket gallery after all, but I'll try to find one that'll back up to Google Photos.

if you dont want a folder to showup on your photos app you could add .nomedia to that folder but mind you that folder wont show up on any app.

 

[LeoRex]

I was viewing as photos. If I view as albums, there's only the albums I've created. I just spent some time fiddling, and it's not terribly intuitive. I might try an aftermarket gallery after all, but I'll try to find one that'll back up to Google Photos.

well, you can have Google Photos backup apps in the background regardless of what app you are using for viewing them. As far as viewing those cloud stored photos, I believe you are stuck with Google Photos for the time being.

But you can pick and choose what gets dumped up into the storage via the settings, like some have mentioned.

 

[cydewaze]

But you can pick and choose what gets dumped up into the storage via the settings, like some have mentioned.

So far it looks like the only way to get my photos back onto the device is to download them with Google Drive, then move them into the camera folder. I'll probably do this on WiFi tonight so I don't eat up all my data. We have WiFi here, but it the speed is pathetic (< 1mbps) and I have 100mb fiber at home.

 

[LeoRex]

So far it looks like the only way to get my photos back onto the device is to download them with Google Drive, then move them into the camera folder. I'll probably do this on WiFi tonight so I don't eat up all my data. We have WiFi here, but it the speed is pathetic (< 1mbps) and I have 100mb fiber at home.

Have you already removed them locally? Google Photos won't automatically remove anything it has backed up unless you explicitly tell it to do so.

I would suggest you give the Photos service a chance (like I mentioned, you don't need to use the app)... it's an incredible service. I can't count how many times we've seen people come here looking for help on lost photos when a simple launch of the Photos app to initialize the backup service would have eliminated the chance that they got lost.

 

[cydewaze]

I would suggest you give the Photos service a chance (like I mentioned, you don't need to use the app)... it's an incredible service

I'm sure it's great, but I'm not sure how great it'll be when I'm up at the cottage (no cell service, data, or internet of any kind) and I want to show some pics I took earlier to a friend or family member.

So, I've plugged the phone into my PC, and I've set it to "transfer files". When I browse to it, I see ten folders, but I can't find any pics. Nothing in /DCIM/Camera
Now, when I hit root browser on the phone, there are countless folders, none of which show up when I browse via the USB cable. What gives? I know my pics are somewhere on the phone because I just took one with data and WiFi turned off, and it's there.

I'd really like to have all the photos that are in my cloud on my phone. It's one of the reasons I bought the 128GB version, but I don't want them scattered all over the phone.

 

[LeoRex]

DCIM/camera is the right path for anything you took.

 

[cydewaze]

DCIM/camera is the right path for anything you took.

That folder is empty even though there are over a dozen pics on the phone.

 

[cydewaze]

Ok, to clarify...

If I connect the phone to my PC and view the contents, I get one folder called "Internal shared storage".
Within that are 10 folders. One of those is DCIM and within that is Camera. Those folders are empty. If I place a photo in the Camera folder, it'll show up in Google Photos.

If I open root browser on the phone, I have a zillion folders. I've found pics here:
/sdcard/DCIM/Camera
That folder has all the pics I've taken since I got the phone.

Are these two folders the same folder? If not, why can't I get to the second one when the phone is connected to my PC. If they are the same one, why can't I see everything in the folder when it's connected to my PC?

EDIT

I just copied a photo to /Internal shared storage/DCIM/Camera and it appeared under root broweser in /sdcard/DCIM/Camera. If I then delete it from root browser, it remains in the /Iss/DCIM/Camera folder, but if I delete it from /Iss/DCIM/Camera from the PC, it also deletes it from /sdcard/DCIM/Camera. So I'm thinking the /Iss/ folder is a symlink or something. But at least I know now that one affects the other.

This is so convoluted! hah!

 

[LeoRex]

Yeah... I don't have a Pixel... just a 6P/5X... and they do play around with some file system stuff a bit in that area... its a weird bunch of redirects sometimes and things could be even weirder since the Pixel dual-boots.

I'll ping the other vol. staff here.. maybe they can help

 

[cydewaze]

I'll ping the other vol. staff here.. maybe they can help

Awesome, thanks.

I think I might end up having to download my cloud photos to my PC, then empty both the cloud and the phone, then re-copy my pics to my phone. Then I can sync the cloud again. Once I get that done, I can probably just carry one, because the new photos seem to stay on the phone OK.

 

[LeoRex]

You should have to remove any of the Google Photos cloud stuff. If you dump all those pics back into the device, Google will pick up that and won't duplicate the file back in the cloud. So you can download all the backed up photos, copy them over to the DCIM/Camera folder and just leave things be.

 

[cydewaze]

You should have to remove any of the Google Photos cloud stuff. If you dump all those pics back into the device, Google will pick up that and won't duplicate the file back in the cloud. So you can download all the backed up photos, copy them over to the DCIM/Camera folder and just leave things be.

Yeah, this is what I ended up doing. Wiping the phone pics, then re-adding my backup from the old phone. Then I downloaded what I took on this phone from Google Photos and added those back as well. The copy over USB is taking a while, so I'm letting it run overnight.

Thanks for the tips! I think I'm going to have things a lot more organized now.

 

[cydewaze]

Well now I have all my pics back on the phone, but the dates are all scrambled. Sigh. Why does this have to be such a pain?

 

[LeoRex]

What app are you viewing the pictures in? I would hope that it would use the EXIF data, which should be preserved, rather than the file attribs.

 

[NexusShark]

So, I'm trying to keep and use as many of the stock apps as possible on this phone and not install a replacement for everything. When I had my Samsung, I used QuickPic, but it always gave me permission issues when trying to delete pics, so I always had to have the stock app hanging around.

I like Google Photos, but it does one thing that annoys me. It shows EVERYTHING on the phone. I recently added a ton of wallpapers to my phone, and now they all show up in the gallery as pics. I don't want to have to scroll past 100 wallpapers to find a pic, so does anyone know if you can hide/exclude/ignore galleries or folders in Google Photos?

To access just the photos taken with the Pixel camera, just click the 3 bars in the upper left in Google photos and go to device folders. That will show you camera roll, downloads, screenshots etc. All separately. Google photos is much simpler than it may seem at first. No need to plug in to a computer. It won't delete pics taken with your Pixel camera unless you tell it to.