Pixel 2XL Photos Dissapeared

[MarkMac203]

In my google photos app, I clicked clear space as I had 20gb of space to clear and everything was fine, except the photos app was having issues loading the old photos that had been removed from the device (I assumed it was an issue with wifi speed). I also had a random section of 200 photos that had a crossed cloud icon on them. (Didn't think much of it).
I decided to restart the device and the photos app start loading the old photos correctly again, but the photos that had a cloud icon dissapeared and I can't find them anywhere, not trash, or on the desktop app. I'm assuming google accidentally thought the photos were uploaded and removed them from my phone. Is there any way to get these back???

 

[GSDer]

Google did NOT think that those pictures were backed up - it was telling you that the 200 pictures had not been uploaded to the cloud (thus the cloud icon was crossed out).
It's stupid that Google would 'clear out' any pictures that had not been uploaded but that's likely what happened. Before you do anything else on the phone you could try one of those file recovery programs that you read about - preferably one that is computer based, so that you don't have to install any files on the phone (which may overwrite the files that were deleted).