Is anyone having problems with Google Photos getting stuck on "Getting photos" dialog?

[DWR_31]

I did the initial setup of the Google Photos app on my S9+ and it gets stuck on the "getting photos" dialog. My other devices don't have this problem when I open the app on them.
I've cleared the cache and data. I've even uninstalled and reinstalled the app.
Any suggestions?

 

[SpookDroid]

For me it took a while at first, but after it did get the photos, it went away. Actually clearing the cache and data might only force it to re-start the process. Have you tried opening the app and just 'let it sync' for a while? Maybe reboot?

 

[DWR_31]

Thanks.
I'll try turning on the screen stay awake while charging option, and leave the app open over night.

 

[SpookDroid]

Thanks.
I'll try turning on the screen stay awake while charging option, and leave the app open over night.

You don't need to leave the app open, just open it once to start the sync (in case it wasn't doing it or something) and then just leave it be. It'll run and sync in the background.

 

[TiCuS_]

Took me 4 hours

 

[rimz808]

I still am having this problem, but I think the issue is because my photos are on a removable SD card. I placed it into my S9+ and for over a week it was still stuck on Getting Photos ready.. 2000+ (which is the amount of photos on the SD card). I am thinking because google photos already techinically has it backedup.. is why it is stuck?

I've tried clearing cache and data and even tried to uninstall the app and install it again, with no luck.

If anyone has any solutions that I should try, it would greatly be appreciated.

 

[Jamiesterling68]

I did the initial setup of the Google Photos app on my S9+ and it gets stuck on the "getting photos" dialog. My other devices don't have this problem when I open the app on them.
I've cleared the cache and data. I've even uninstalled and reinstalled the app.
Any suggestions?

I had this issue, ended up being because of my SD card having a read error and was prompting to format it.

Ended up copying everything to my internal storage. Removing the card and then eventually Google photos synced everything. Only annoying thing is all my photos have some how lost meta data so all the photo taken dates are the day I copied them over so everything is out of order in gallery lol

 

[Matt Comeau]

Hello,

I think i got it fixed (for me anyways).

I was having the same problem. I just upgraded to a new s9, and Google Photos was saying "Getting Photos" for over 12 hours. So i tried a bunch of different things, like clear cache, uninstall and reinstall with rebooting it every time.

I have over 6000 Pics and Vids on SD, and another 1500 on internal.

What i did: (sorry its long, i didn't want to miss anything)
1)Logged out of Google Photos
2)Went into App Management though the settings, and cleared both Data, and Cache
3)Uninstalled from App Managment
4)Shut Down Phone
5)Pulled SD Card out. (I cleaned it while i had it out, but did not re-install yet)
6)Reinstalled SIM (without SD) and rebooted phone
7)Reinstalled Google Photos from Play Store
6)When i opened Google Photos, it was already logged in, but if yours does not, re-login.
7)Waited for it to say "Backup Complete", which was super quick with just internal photos, like 3 minutes or something.
8)Shut down phone
9)Re-installed SD card
10)Rebooted Phone
11)Opened Google Photos. It still said "Getting Photos", but the status bar was "different".

It originally was saying "getting photos" for about 3 minutes, and then said "backing up 7930 photos. Which i let it sit for about 30 minutes, and its at 2100 photos now. Its not complete done, but close. It for some reason didn't like it when i took the SD out of my S7 and put it in my S9. Thats when google photos started going crazy. But i also allowed the phone to "optimize" google photos for battery life around the same time. So could have been that too.

I hope this helps someone. I was going nuts trying to figure it out. Please let me know if you have questions on my steps.

Good Luck!

 

[Matt Comeau]

Ok, well, almost. lol

One of the original problems was it was stuck on "Backing Up 9 Photos", which once it got through the thousands of pics, it hung back up on the 9. For a very brief moment, i saw a thumbnail of one of the pictures backing up. At least i was able to find it by sheer luck. I deleted the one i saw, and the ones around it, and got it down to 6.

I might just need to be more patient and let it do its thing. I will try to update the final outcome. Pictures are to important to have a problem like this. Usually.

 

[rimz808]

Hello,

I think i got it fixed (for me anyways).

I was having the same problem. I just upgraded to a new s9, and Google Photos was saying "Getting Photos" for over 12 hours. So i tried a bunch of different things, like clear cache, uninstall and reinstall with rebooting it every time.

I have over 6000 Pics and Vids on SD, and another 1500 on internal.

What i did: (sorry its long, i didn't want to miss anything)
1)Logged out of Google Photos
2)Went into App Management though the settings, and cleared both Data, and Cache
3)Uninstalled from App Managment
4)Shut Down Phone
5)Pulled SD Card out. (I cleaned it while i had it out, but did not re-install yet)
6)Reinstalled SIM (without SD) and rebooted phone
7)Reinstalled Google Photos from Play Store
6)When i opened Google Photos, it was already logged in, but if yours does not, re-login.
7)Waited for it to say "Backup Complete", which was super quick with just internal photos, like 3 minutes or something.
8)Shut down phone
9)Re-installed SD card
10)Rebooted Phone
11)Opened Google Photos. It still said "Getting Photos", but the status bar was "different".

It originally was saying "getting photos" for about 3 minutes, and then said "backing up 7930 photos. Which i let it sit for about 30 minutes, and its at 2100 photos now. Its not complete done, but close. It for some reason didn't like it when i took the SD out of my S7 and put it in my S9. Thats when google photos started going crazy. But i also allowed the phone to "optimize" google photos for battery life around the same time. So could have been that too.

I hope this helps someone. I was going nuts trying to figure it out. Please let me know if you have questions on my steps.

Good Luck!

Thank you for those steps and sharing it with us. I will give that a try and let you know my results as well. It's been very frustrating that I cannot have google photos auto backup/Sync my photos on my new phone.

Will try and let you know

 

[Matt Comeau]

Thank you for those steps and sharing it with us. I will give that a try and let you know my results as well. It's been very frustrating that I cannot have google photos auto backup/Sync my photos on my new phone.

Will try and let you know

Definitely something to do with the SD card. After doing all of that yesterday, it still got stuck on 5 photos. So this morning I shut down the phone, pulled the SD card out again, booted it up and let Google Photos run. And within seconds, it said back up complete.

I then shut down, and reinstalled the SD card, went back into Google Photos, and after a minute or two, it said the backup was done.

So something did finally work. As of right now, it is working properly. I was literally about to order a new SD card, and move everything into its own folder, and hide it from google photos. It must be an old photo, or video causing it.

Crazy. Lol.

 

[Stanfna]

Definitely something to do with the SD card. After doing all of that yesterday, it still got stuck on 5 photos. So this morning I shut down the phone, pulled the SD card out again, booted it up and let Google Photos run. And within seconds, it said back up complete.

I then shut down, and reinstalled the SD card, went back into Google Photos, and after a minute or two, it said the backup was done.

So something did finally work. As of right now, it is working properly. I was literally about to order a new SD card, and move everything into its own folder, and hide it from google photos. It must be an old photo, or video causing it.

Crazy. Lol.

I had the same issue. this seems to have fixed it! thanks!

 

[Matt Comeau]

Glad it worked! Mines been good since. Only thing is that I have it set to be optimized on my s9 plus, so photos won’t automatically upload in the background. I just open google photos, and leave it open, then let it run. Been great so far.

 

[bIOforger]

I had the exact same issue syncing in MS Onedrive on a new s9+, it was running in the background doing nothing (i thought) for hours, chewing cpu and 10-20% battery, either saying it was looking for photos or backing them up. I couldn't stop it unless i disabled the application to begin with or at some point turning off the camera upload also worked.

I also put this down to a picture it didn't like in my library as i have thousands of pics in multiple folders and/or SD card corruption (as the card is 2yrs old now). I narrowed the issue down to being in a 1200 pic "wallpaper" folder. So i formatted my 128GB SD card believing that was the issue and copied all my media back to it from PC backups. It didn't make a blind bit of difference, same issue happened when it came to backup/check/resync the wallpaper folder!

So in the end i just left the 1drive app running overnight while the phone was on charge, then it worked lol. I believe it took over 9 hours to complete it shouldn't take that long.

However the notification still kept popping up "backing up photos" although it wasn't using cpu/batt anymore. At this point i was just sick of it and couldnt be bothered anymore. So it stays off until i need it now. I'm pretty sure there's some syncing bugs going on with the app with certain setups/media.

p.s Google Photos works (kinda) and synced all my media with no issue, although it still says there's 1 file to back up, although there isn't, which i cant get rid of, at least it isn't using any cpu or battery, so i can live with that.

 

[Miftahul55]

Glad it worked! Mines been good since. Only thing is that I have it set to be optimized on my s9 plus, so photos won’t automatically upload in the background. I just open google photos, and leave it open, then let it run. Been great so far.

What is the optimized setting and how can I turn it off?

 

[bIOforger]

What is the optimized setting and how can I turn it off?

I think he just means he has the auto camera/folder upload turned off. There is no "optimised setting"

 

[rimz808]

After getting my new S9+ since it was released, Google photos FINALLY is able to backup all my 2000+ photos without being stuck. Either the phone update did something, or a new google photo update. But I noticed now that all my photos are able to successfully backup.

Glad it fixed itself because it was really annoying me that I could not utilize google photos on my samsung device. I surmised it was because I was using my external SD card from another phone that caused the issue.