Delete photo confusion with Nexus 5/Google+

[tdellaringa]

Hi,

I've been through a lot of threads on this, but nothing is solving my problem. I have tons of photos on my phone that take up a lot of space, they were pulled from G+ before I turned off auto backup. Then, I scanned a bunch of photos and uploaded them to G+ over the holiday, and they were added to my phone (I didn't know that would happen).

I've gone into Photos > On Device - but there are only 7 photos there. Not the thousands that I see in my gallery. I don't know if these are just thumbnail representations or what, but I want them off my phone. This includes 100's of videos, too. It seems like the actual picture/video IS on my phone, even though it doesn't show up under "on device."

Note, I want to KEEP all this stuff on my G+ photos account. That's where I store all my family photo stuff. I just don't want it on my phone. I do want pics taken on my phone going UP to to G+ but I do not want photos on G+ downloaded to my phone.

There must be some way to do this.

 

[SpookDroid]

If you take your phone offline, can you still access the full version of those pictures? Or the videos you're referring to?

AFAIK Google Photos shows your cloud pictures (and I haven't seen an option to 'hide' them, other than un-syncing your account) but they're just previews. If you're not online, you can't access the full version. Same thing with videos.

 

[tdellaringa]

Not sure - how do I take my phone offline?

 

[SpookDroid]

The most effective way is to just put it into Airplane mode. That way you won't have mobile data nor WiFi (unless you manually turn WiFi on). The idea is to deny your phone any network connection so that you know what is in your phone and what is in the Cloud only.

That's my main gripe with Google Photos. There's no clear way of knowing what's in your device, what's in both device and cloud, and what's only in the cloud. Also on their site there's no way to separate pictures from your device, from Hangouts conversations, and from any other linked devices. They go into a single pile of pictures. Annoying.

 

[tdellaringa]

So yeah, in Airplane mode, I can see ALL photos and videos. But when I delete one of those photos, it says it will delete it everywhere, with no other option.

 

[Golfdriver97]

I would do a copy/paste on a PC, just in case, and follow Spook's suggestion.

 

[Rukbat]

Put the phone off line and restart it. Media Scan builds its database on start, so taking the phone off line, if most of those pictures are on the cloud, will not change the database and you'll still see at least the thumbnails of what's in the database. (Gallery and Photos don't have places where they keep pictures, they just show what Media Scan found.)

If rebuilding the database (restarting) with the phone in airplane mode still shows the pictures, they're on the phone, and you'll have to use a file manager to hunt them all down and delete them. ("Sync" means "both have the same things", so either you have them on the cloud and in your phone or you don't. Deleting them from the phone, then turning off airplane mode, if you still have sync enabled, will either delete them from the cloud or download them to the phone, depending on which has precedence.)

As far as taking a picture right to the cloud without having it on your phone - most camera apps can't do that. They store the picture on the SD card or in internal storage (some give you a choice,m others just use internal storage) and depend on syncing to send them to the cloud if you want them backed up that way.

Which is why I back my pictures up to my computer (manually, by connecting the phone to the computer and copying what I want to the computer), then manually copying them to a cloud account. I can have different things on the phone, the computer and the cloud - it's my choice, not the phone's. If I wanted the phone to make my choices for me I'd be using an iPhone.

 

[tdellaringa]

Yeah restarting, they are all there. So there's no file manager on the phone by default I can use then? Can anyone suggest a good one? I have auto backup turned off - but do I also need to turn off sync somewhere else?

I originally had photos on G+ because I was using Picasa for our photos, and that's how they ended up getting up there. I recently switched to a mac at home, so things got a little odd. All my photos are backed up using CrashPlan though off my main computer. But I like having them on G+ - I just don't want to have it screwing up my phone - I'd prefer to do it manually like you say.

I love my Android phone except for this one thing. It drives me crazy.

 

[Golfdriver97]

I like es file explorer.

From an AOSP M8

 

[tdellaringa]

To be clear, I need to make sure sync is off for photos/videos if I want them to stay on G+ correct? I have auto share off, but where is sync?

 

[Golfdriver97]

Sync should be under settings>Google.

From an AOSP M8

 

[tdellaringa]

Hmm, I have Android L lollipop - I don't seem to have that in settings...

 

[Rukbat]

In Settings, under Account. Google accounts. Your gmail address. That should give you a page of checkboxes for syncing all sorts of things. Google+ (or maybe it's still called Picassa in Lollipop) is your picture sync.

 

[tdellaringa]

Ah great. I turned off all the Google+ stuff. So I assume now I can delete photos using the file explorer with abandon, and my google photos online will stay intact, correct?

It's kind of a bummer I can't view the files in ES File explorer as thumbnails to get an overall view of what is in there. I can open individual files only.