How to actually get Photos to delete pictures?

[david.karr]

I have a Galaxy Note 9 (Android 10). I want to delete some photos from my account. I have tried various solutions, and nothing has worked.

(Note that the category list for this forum doesn't have a category for the Note 9.)

I posted the following with the details: https://support.google.com/photos/thread/148745013/how-to-get-galaxy-note-9-to-let-me-delete-photos?hl=en .

But I'll go over them here again.

I select a photo to delete and click the bin button, then confirm "Move to trash". That then presents a dialog saying I need to change my settings, which then presents an odd full screen dialog which prompts me to "Allow access to SD Card", which very carefully asks me to confirm this with two levels of confirmation. That then sends me back to the Photos app where the photo I selected was still there. I then select the same photo and repeat the same process, ad infinitum. Nothing gets deleted.

Note that in system settings, "Apps", then "Photos", I have it set to "External Storage".

As I said in the note, I've tried deleting cache and data. After that, it spent several hours working on restoring all of that, but it made no difference.

 

[SpookDroid]

Long press the Photos app and go to Permissions. Is the Storage permission set to Allowed? Have you tried deleting the photo from the web portal? Is the picture you want to delete stored in internal memory or SD card (and does it make a difference if you try to delete a picture on either)?

 

[mustang7757]

I have a Galaxy Note 9 (Android 10). I want to delete some photos from my account. I have tried various solutions, and nothing has worked.

(Note that the category list for this forum doesn't have a category for the Note 9.)

I posted the following with the details: https://support.google.com/photos/t...t-galaxy-note-9-to-let-me-delete-photos?hl=en .

But I'll go over them here again.

I select a photo to delete and click the bin button, then confirm "Move to trash". That then presents a dialog saying I need to change my settings, which then presents an odd full screen dialog which prompts me to "Allow access to SD Card", which very carefully asks me to confirm this with two levels of confirmation. That then sends me back to the Photos app where the photo I selected was still there. I then select the same photo and repeat the same process, ad infinitum. Nothing gets deleted.

Note that in system settings, "Apps", then "Photos", I have it set to "External Storage".

As I said in the note, I've tried deleting cache and data. After that, it spent several hours working on restoring all of that, but it made no difference.

[Hello , i moved your question to Note 9 forums]

Probably didn't scroll down far enough

 

[david.karr]

Long press the Photos app and go to Permissions. Is the Storage permission set to Allowed? Have you tried deleting the photo from the web portal? Is the picture you want to delete stored in internal memory or SD card (and does it make a difference if you try to delete a picture on either)?

Yes, Storage is set to Allowed.

I just tried to delete it from the web portal. It appeared to go away, but of course it's still on my phone.

When I look at info for the pic, it has a path of "/storage/.../DCIM/Camera/...".

 

[Edox]

Yes, Storage is set to Allowed.

I just tried to delete it from the web portal. It appeared to go away, but of course it's still on my phone.

When I look at info for the pic, it has a path of "/storage/.../DCIM/Camera/...".

Try going to internal storage, settings and open "Show hidden system files" ... maybe something is hidden so you don't see ..
And when you enter DCIM / Camera ... do you find that picture?

 

[david.karr]

Try going to internal storage, settings and open "Show hidden system files" ... maybe something is hidden so you don't see ..
And when you enter DCIM / Camera ... do you find that picture?

Either I didn't make it clear, or you're misunderstanding the problem. I'm unable to delete pictures from the phone. Considering that fact, it's pretty likely that navigating to DCIM/Camera would show that picture, because I'm unable to delete it from the phone.

Just to be sure, I opened up a file explorer and navigated to that directory and found the file. In fact, that is the ONLY file of any type in that directory.

The other odd thing is that I assume this directory is NOT the SD card. I have my camera set with "Storage Location" set to "SD card". It doesn't appear to be storing pictures on the SD card.

 

[SpookDroid]

If you can't delete the file even using a File Explorer (has to be the stock one... the My Files app), then there's something wrong with the file or your storage, not the apps. I would try this again in Safe Mode to rule out any 3rd party apps causing the conflict. Also, could you share the full path of the file? Can't remember what it's called when a phone has SD card (it's been so long! haha) but in my current phone, the internal storage isn't called just storage, it's actually called 'INTERNAL storage'. Maybe the file IS in the SD card (that would explain why 3rd party apps might not be able to delete it off your phone).

 

[B. Diddy]

When I look at info for the pic, it has a path of "/storage/.../DCIM/Camera/...".

Can you give the full pathname for that directory?

Just to be clear -- when you used the file manager, did you look in both internal storage and the SD card for the /DCIM/Camera directory? Both locations would have this directory if you ever set the Camera to save to the SD card.

The scenario I'm thinking of is that the SD card is corrupt, making it difficult for the phone to delete photos from it.

 

[SpookDroid]

I'd also try switching the Camera to Internal Storage, take sample pictures and try to delete them. If THOSE are successful then the ones you can't delete are very likely stored in either a damaged SD card or using an app that has no access to external storage (i.e. 3rd party apps).