Photos missing from device - Pixel 2

[boonstick]

Hi,

I've recently noticed that if I want to post or send a photo that I've previously taken with the stock camera app I can't see it within other apps like WhatsApp or Instagram.

I can see all my photos in the Google Photos app ok and I've checked my online account on a PC and they are also all there. I've also checked for .nomedia files and that's ok as well.

One thing I did notice is that my Pictures folder and DCIM folders are both empty. The DCIM folder only had a few recent photos inside and these seemed to be the ones that hasn't been backed up yet.

It almost seems like once they have been backed up the other apps can no longer see them as the ones that are still in the DCIM and haven't been backed up can be seen from within the other apps (WhatsApp and instagram etc).

Ive searched all over for a solution and but I can't seem to find anything that relates to this issue.

 

[toiday]

Make sure you allowed those app to access your photos.

 

[boonstick]

Yeah, Ive checked that and everything seems to be ok.

 

[GSDer]

One thing I did notice is that my Pictures folder and DCIM folders are both empty. The DCIM folder only had a few recent photos inside and these seemed to be the ones that hasn't been backed up yet.

There's something strange going on there - I have every photo back to my last Factory Reset in the /DCIM/Camera folder.

Sounds to me like you've activated the 'Free up device storage' option in Google Photos, or have used the 'Clean' option in Files Go. Do you have a 3rd party application that automatically does clean up on your phone?

 

[boonstick]

There's something strange going on there - I have every photo back to my last Factory Reset in the /DCIM/Camera folder.

Sounds to me like you've activated the 'Free up device storage' option in Google Photos, or have used the 'Clean' option in Files Go. Do you have a 3rd party application that automatically does clean up on your phone?

No, I've not got any 3rd party cleaning apps and to my knowledge since Ive had the phone I've always allowed my phone to "free up space" and still been able to see my photos in other apps like Instagram and WhatsApp.

I thought it might have something to do with the latest Android 9.0 update.

I did a factory reset and restore last night and still no joy...

 

[Photo_Drew]

sometimes in apps you have to dig to see Google photos option. if they're off the phone because of a fdr or free up space the apps won't see them in folders

 

[GSDer]

since Ive had the phone I've always allowed my phone to "free up space" and still been able to see my photos in other apps like Instagram and WhatsApp.

I can't comment on Instagram since I don't use it. All I can tell you is that WhatsApp shows an indeterminate range of pictures in its list: not all the pictures that are in Google Photos, but seemingly more than what's actually saved on my device. I'll have to clean up, so that no pictures are stored locally, before I can be more specific.
Edit: so I just cleaned all media off of my phone, rebooted it, went into WhatsApp and it shows NOTHING, which is pretty much what I expected. There's no local media on the phone, therefore there's nothing for WhatsApp to show that could be shared. WhatsApp doesn't have direct access to the content in Google Photos - the only way to share content in Google Photos that's not stored locally on the device is to do it from Google Photos: go in, select the picture(s) that you want to share, then use the share picker to choose the application that you want to share it with.
I'm not sure what you were expecting but this is the way I remember it always operating, even back to Oreo.