Considering Google Backup but confused about Photos

[gardengal4]

I have Samsung S7 Android 9 and as great as this phone is and the 8 year comfort factor, I have to be realistic that I may need to upgrade sooner rather than later so I am getting serious about starting doing backups. As far as Photos go, I don't need backups. My pics are on a micro-sd and I also have Dropbox auto uploads.

However, I didn't see that I can pick what gets backed up. I want to opt out of Photos. I probably don't have enough free storage to back up 8 years of Gallery which probably 30% of them are junk unnecessary pics used fleetingly in text messages. When I start the backup setup process, I initially get a message that I need to update Photos app and give permission. Currently Photos app does not have Storage permission. It had it, but I denied it to try to prevent backup. I thought that might be clever way to opt-out but no can do. Until I update Photos app and give permission, I can't move forward to see if I can there is an option to uncheck Photo backup.

Assuming I can get past that problem, my real problem is that I accessed Photos App on my computer to see what if anything was there. There is quite a bit. It took me forever but I finally figured out how that stuff got there. I used to use Picasa&Picasaweb. When PicasaWeb was retired, all my PicasaWeb pics landed in Photos app. This is very concerning because I am afraid that if I commence backups, those photos might sync to my phone. I don't want them on my phone. I really don't even want them in Photos but it was nostalgic looking through 10-15 year old pics. All those pics are on my PC too where they originated from but these were a nice subset of nicely organized and labeled ones.

Bottom line questions: (1) can I opt out of Photos backup? I've read the articles but still not clear. (2) will my existing Photos pics sync to my phone?

And another: (3) Will contacts that are located in Phone Storage get backed up or only contacts that are assigned to my google account?

4) If backups are turned on, does every new pic taken upload to Photos in real time?

Thanks so much for reading all this... verbose is my middle name

 

[SpookDroid]

1) Absolutely. You can turn off back up by going into the Photos app, tapping on your account on the top right, and turning the toggle off.
2) Nope. Even if you turn on back up, no pictures are ever downloaded to your phone unless you select to have specific files available offline.
3) Only contacts in your Google Account.
4) Depends on your mobile data settings in the Photos app (otherwise, they upload only on WiFi and only if plugged in/over 50% battery).

Notes: If you turn on back up on your phone, only your camera folder (and in the case of Samsung phones, because they save them to the same folder, screenshots) is automatically backed up. You can select the quality/size of the back up, and also if you want additional folders in your phone to back up as well.

There's an option in the Photos app to completely delete your specific phone's backed up pictures from the cloud if they are already uploaded.

Also, Photos syncs across devices. You may see all your files available on multiple devices if they are in your account, but unless you manually select them for offline use, they are NOT physically in your device (unless it's the one that generated them). This, unfortunately, also means that Google syncs deletion. If you delete a file from your computer and it originated in your phone, it will try to delete it from your phone as well and not just the cloud back up (for this, however, the app will ask before it does and will need access to external storage if you still have an SD card).

And finally, SD cards are finnicky. VERY. Look for the forum posts here of 'Help! All my pictures in SD card have disappeared and I have no back up!' (Myself included... thrice). I strongly suggest you do not use external media for camera storage and only move files there if you've backed them up elsewhere.

 

[gardengal4]

1) It started doing a backup before I could toggle off. Weird because not only I wasn't plugged in, Account backups were off. But I managed to stop it quickly and then had an opportunity to delete the partial backup it started.

2) Good. Further thinking on this though, when I eventually do a Google Restore after a new phone, will all my current Picasaweb pics that are stored in Photos get restored, Maybe I should use takeout on them and just get them out of there. But Photos is not really storage, right? It's just a view of some other storage. That's how I'm thinking about it. Maybe those pics live in Drive somewhere. On my phone I saw that Photos app was displaying my SD card photos. That seemed odd at first, but I've just never used the Photos app. I guess its fine. I verified in Details that the photos were indeed on my SD card.

3) Could those Phone contacts possibly be considered AppData belonging to the Contacts App? I was helping my sister sort out Phone contacts and Google contacts. I showed her that she has both. We saw that any new contacts go to Phone storage not Google. We couldn't find a setting to change that. On my ancient phone I can specify where they go (I set default storage location to Google). But I cannot Move from one to the other on my phone. She can on hers. I think my historical Phone contacts must have come from my prior phone somehow. Most were old original (flip phone) contacts or my first smart phone.

4) Not sure I follow your answer, but I am not going to be using the Photos app so moot point. Gallery is just fine for me. I was only using Photos on my PC out of curiousity to see what was there and required to use it on phone to progress to do non-Photo backups

5) SD cards.... sorry to hear that. A while ago I removed mine and copied its contents to a backup hard drive. Its been awhile since I did that. Maybe time to do it again. I started pretend looking at possible phone upgrades awhile ago and was sad to discover that expandable storage is no longer a thing! I think I found it on a low-end phone. If I want to get those pics onto a new phone, I guess I will have to do it via the Photos app. There goes my 15gb free storage!

I appreciate your input. As an older person, I hate change as you can see. But its nice to step through it slowly with the help of others.