Google Photos No Longer Deletes From SD Card (and misspelled a word)

[efrommel13]

This seems to work on the MOTO Z2 force too. stupid google really?

NEVER MIND, the photos appears againg... F#CK!

 

[efrommel13]

NEVER MIND, the photos appears again... F#CK!

 

[thebat1]

I am not sure if this is still useful to you but I found that if you move the Photos app to SD card via Application Manager- you can now delete photos in SD card as well using "Delete device copy"...

Can you tell me what "App manager" your referring to?
I am using the Droid Z force phone and this issue is driving me nuts..

Thanks so much!!

 

[cotati]

I'm having this issue now although recently (i think before i infused nougat?) it told me how to give it permission (ONCE) and the other day i noticed it said in storage that one folder has access? But it didn't say which one or how to give them all access. And it seemed like the issue had resolved bc I've deleted a ton of pics i thought in photos, without getting the can't do it pop-up. Until today. It's back. Any suggestions? I'm so over this already! :'(

How do you 'infuse' nougat and why would a person do that?

 

[adrianm1]

Sigh. Well, at least they fixed the spelling.



OK, so this thread is ludicrously old but the issue remains... at least on Android 4.4.2
The error message is clear enough - "Photos doesn't have access to delete items on your SD card."
But what does the App's permissions say...



"modify or delete the contents of your SD card"

I can't just let this go.

Clearing app cache & data didn't solve it. Uninstalling & reinstalling didn't solve it. Manually deleting a photo from the gallery (as suggested by App, but discouraged by some Google employee reply I read a while ago - can't remember where) is not without danger... plus the Photos App locked-up when I did this and it didn't seem to notice that the photo had been deleted (I tried selecting it when it was still on display).

Oh I know 4.4.2 is geriatric - but here's the thing - if you need one, in 2018, the only (please correct me if I'm wrong) smartphone with a 21x optical zoom lens combined is the Galaxy Zoom series

Not to everyone's tastes I know, but if your'e travelling light and prioritise taking pictures over ear mashing - these things are ideal.

Whatever happened to consumer choice?

I digress. I still feel there may be a trick to get Photos to tidy out the SD card. What else could it be?

 

[B. Diddy]

It may be that the permission is referring to the "internal SD" (i.e., Internal Storage). Android has always technically regarded internal storage as an "SD card," which can obviously cause a lot of confusion when you have to differentiate an internal SD from an external SD. The error message is probably referring to an external SD, while the technical term used in the permission list refers to the internal SD.

 

[adrianm1]

It may be that the permission is referring to the "internal SD" (i.e., Internal Storage).

Hi B. Diddy, it's certainly confusing - especially when checking the storage permissions of other apps...

Storage on 4.2.2 is broken into Device Memory (internal storage, total device capacity 8GB) and SD card (external SD card 16GB) on my phone.

Although most apps have the "modify or delete the contents of your SD card" permission set, some that don't still show cache/app data usage implying to me that no specific permission is required to access the Device Memory area.

If it wasn't for that, I'd be more inclined to go along with your explanation.

 

[B. Diddy]

Definitely confusing. When an app asks for permission to access Storage, I believe that's for the user-accessible directories (like the /Download directory). I don't think an app needs to ask for permission to utilize system directories (which would be where it would store cached and most app data). Here's an example that I recently learned about from another member: if you use the Google search app to search for an image and download it, by default it gets saved to a system directory called /document that the user can't actually access from anywhere else besides the Google app. This is because the Google app's Storage permission is actually off by default -- once you turn it on, it will download images to the /Download directory, where the user can actually access it using any other app.

Keep in mind that this is all speculation and educated guesswork on my part, since I'm not an Android engineer.

 

[adrianm1]

Ah I get it. Apps may be able to use a certain amount of system store without needing additional permissions. If I could only be bothered to dig out the Eclipse project I started to learn app development on (and gave up on) I could test this out. Thanks for the example anyway!

(For a moment there I started to feel guilty that I'd abandoned Android app development - then I remembered the large corporation that's left us with the half-baked product that's causing this issue)