Can't Find Old Google Photo File

[Starryhope]

I have a V30

For years, through several phone changes a large photo file was stored in Google Photos. Every time I switch phones I would check to make sure it followed along and always has, including the V30 I started using, about a year and a half ago. The weird thing about the file, it was always hard to locate but now it's so damn hard I can't find it at all. I appreciate any ideas or guidance you good folks can offer.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! What was the photo of? Google Photos has a powerful search feature, so try searching for whatever it was (for example, if it was a beach scene, search for "beach").

 

[Starryhope]

Thank you! There were hundreds of photos, it was a pretty big file.

 

[B. Diddy]

Are you talking about an album? "File" refers to one specific file/photo.

 

[Starryhope]

Maybe a better word would be folder.

 

[B. Diddy]

It's important to understand how Google Photos backs up your photos. By default, the only directory/folder that gets backed up is your camera roll (i.e., the /DCIM/Camera directory). Any other device folder that gets created and has images (e.g., photos downloaded from the Google Messages app, which is saved to the /Pictures/Messages directory) won't get backed up automatically unless you set it to back up from within the Google Photos app.

If you do back up any of these other device folders to Google Photos, they won't be backed up as a separate folder in the cloud -- they'll just mix in with the rest of your photos. So if you go to photos.google.com on your computer browser, you'd find those photos there, but not in a folder that's the same as the one on the phone. In Google Photos, you can create your own "virtual" albums, which means you essentially assign a photo to any number of albums you want -- but these albums don't correlate with any physical directory on your phone.