Question Damn Google!

[Jhatn]

Last month, I realized that pictures I was taking w/my phone were not being saved to my SD card/the phone itself (I fixed this since then). So I did a deep search of my phone & found out that, even though I do not use it & have disabled it on my phone, Google was STILL uploading any pictures I was taking to Google Photos.

I have a Motorola phone running Android 11.
I use the Moto Camera 2 v7.3.44.57 that came pre-installed on the phone.
The phone also has the Google Photos app v6.15.0.489522616, which I DO NOT use.

I have a problem with Google Photos & hope someone can help me.

Quite some time ago, I went into the Google Photos information page, turned off all Notifications, removed all Permissions, cleared both Cache & Storage, pressed Force Stop & then Disabled the app.

So, can someone please tell me why new pictures I take are STILL being uploaded to Google Photos?

I looked-up the Google Photos contact information (in their own Play Store) & asked for help, but this is what I received in response:
"Hello,
Thank you for contacting Google.
You have emailed an address that is no longer being monitored.
To get help, please visit https://support.google.com."

I've tried that so-called 'help' page a few times in the past & all I get is the run-around w/o any clear answers to the above question or any questions I've had in the past.
Makes me wish to have a Nothing Phone (which has much less Google) or maybe even try the Apple eco-system.

 

[B. Diddy]

Are you absolutely certain the photos are being backed up to the cloud? The sure way to tell is to go to photos.google.com on your computer browser and see if the photos are there. If they're not there, then the photos you're finding on the Google Photos app are likely just saved somewhere on the phone's storage only.

 

[Mooncatt]

Google Photos isn't just cloud backup. It acts as a gallery as well, showing locally stored media. It's likely that's what you are seeing, not cloud backups.

 

[J Dubbs]

You can also go to Settings>Google>Backup and turn off the option to save photos and video to your Google cloud storage. There's a list of what's backed up, and you can turn things on and off individually, or turn automatic backup off completely. I think you've tried to disable the app but haven't actually turned the backup off.

I've turned mine off that way and never had to touch anything inside the app

 

[Jhatn]

Thanks for the responses.

Using my desktop computer; I logged into my Google account, went to photos.google.com, checked every link (& sublinks within) listed on the left side (circled in red, picture 1). Nothing is found anywhere. Nothing is found when looking in Storage either (picture 2).

I took the memory card out of my phone (where all my pictures get saved) & did a complete search of the phone for any pictures in every folder (picture 3).
I did find a few pictures, they were in 2 different "\.thumbnails" folder.

I enabled Google Photos & looked in every folder, I did find a few pictures which I deleted.
How do I turn off the option to save photos & video to my Google cloud storage? Is this done through the Google Photos app or my Google Account online?

 

[Mooncatt]

I enabled Google Photos & looked in every folder, I did find a few pictures which I deleted.
How do I turn off the option to save photos & video to my Google cloud storage? Is this done through the Google Photos app or my Google Account online?

Open Photos and tap your profile pic in the upper right corner. In the pop-up menu, does it have an option to turn backup on? If so, then you're already set and don't need to do anything to turn it off.

If it just says backup and you tap that section, it'll take you to another backup screen with a gear icon in the upper right. Tap that gear and you'll see an option to turn backup off.

Anything that may have been backed up in the past would still be there and will need to be manually deleted. This is one of the things I hate most about Photos backup, because deleting anything from it will also delete it from your phone. Apparently Google thinks if you don't want a backed up copy, you don't want it at all. You should make a copy of any of those items and store them separately BEFORE you delete from Photos just in case.

 

[B. Diddy]

I did find a few pictures, they were in 2 different "\.thumbnails" folder.

That might be the issue. The .thumbnails folder is a hidden system folder (you can tell by the leading period, which is the convention the system uses to designate folders that are hidden), so it may not seem like the photos are stored anywhere unless you use a file manager that can show hidden files/folders. You can always delete all of the files in the .thumbnails folder -- the system will still create more thumbnails going forward, but it won't create another thumbnail of previously deleted photos.