Solution to the Issue: 'When I delete photos on my iPhone, they also delete from Google Photos.'

In this video, I'll do a quick response to the biggest problem people are having transitioning over to Google Photos. This is a follow-up from my video “Free Up Space on your iPhone with Google Photos.”

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Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today's video, I'll do a quick response to the biggest problem people are having transitioning over to Google Photos. This is a follow-up from my video “Free Up Space on your iPhone with Google Photos.”

I just wanted to do a quick video that addresses the most frequent issue that people are having when trying to offload photos from their iPhone to Google Photos. That issue is that once they finish the transition process, they delete a photo from their phone and it also deletes from Google Photos. I outline in my video that this is NOT the way that Google Photos is supposed to work. Once everything is uploaded to Google Photos, if you delete a photo from your iPhone, it should stay in Google Photos.

So, the important thing here is the phrase "Once you have uploaded everything to Google Photos." If you have 100s or 1,000s or tens of thousands of photos on your phone, this process could take a LONG TIME. It does not happen immediately. I'm talking HOURS or DAYS in many cases depending on your internet speed. Let me show you how you can tell whether your photos have completed uploading. Go into Google Photos, and look at your profile icon up here in the upper right. If it has a dotted outline with a little upward arrow, it is still uploading. You can see in this one it's giving me an idea of how far it is through the uploading process by how much unbroken line there is. So, it's not very far along. You can find out still more information, by tapping on your profile icon. That will show you how many items are left to back up. In this case, it is still backing up 5 items. I need to wait for all of them to back up or upload to the Cloud before I delete anything from my phone. Here are some other ways to know what is going on in Google Photos. If you go back to the photos screen, there is sometimes a small icon in the bottom left of a photo. Sometimes it looks like a circle spinning. That means that it is working on uploading those photos -- it is not finished yet. Sometimes it will look like a cloud with an exclamation point in it. That means hasn't uploaded the photos -- maybe because it is waiting for a wifi connection to upload (if you have that checked in settings). And finally, sometimes it will have an icon that looks like 2 arrows in a circle -- that ALSO means it isn't uploaded to the cloud. I have to say I don't know all of the nuances of each of these symbols, but suffice it to say, if your photo has ANY of these symbols in the bottom right-hand corner, it has NOT uploaded to Google Photos, so you need to wait before deleting it off of your phone. When everything is backed up this is the way Google Photos will look:
* You will have a colorful unbroken line outlining your profile picture and the little arrow down here will be greyed out.
* When you click on your profile, it will say "Backup Complete"
* All of your photos will be clean without any of these three symbols in the bottom right-hand corners.

Only then can you be entirely sure that everything is backed up to Google Photos. Once that is true, you can delete photos from your iPhone and they will stay in Google Photos just as I said in the video. But just to be absolutely sure, what I would do is actually use the Google Photos tool for this. Go back and click on your profile picture and choose Photos Settings. Now click on Manage device storage and choose Free Up Space. That will allow Google Photos to delete the photos from your phone that it has already backed up.

I hope this helps! Let me know if you have questions. Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!

[imotomoves]

I’m not Gunn lie... you did a great job explaining clear and to the point. God knows people loose their minds explaining it trying to understand the best back up methods lol. Thanks this is useful.

[annaquinne]

The last 30 seconds helped me free up 50 GB on my phone! Never knew about this button. Thank you so much from saving me from having to go through every video to decide whether to delete it.

[emmarubio]

THANK YOU I was wondering why they weren’t staying in google photos

[katej-c]

This helped A LOT! Thank you for both videos....sitting here with almost 20k photos....the backup may take awhile....lol! You made it very easy to understand and to follow along.

[jeronandjerald]

You did an Amazing Job at telling us. i managed to save 50 Gigabytes of storage in my ipad

You are a life saver earned a new subscriber!

[eddiemattison]

Thanks for the video. How to organize pictures in Google Photos that won't take me days or weeks to do, please? Or is there a way to organize photos on my iphone BEFORE I upload them to Google Photos? Thank you!

[patriciallerena]

Had I search for this much earlier, I would not have lost may of my photos. Thank you, you explained it so well.

[DennisBareis]

I think this video answers a different problem/question. If you use the google photos free up space it will not remove these from the cloud. If you use another app to go to the file storage and delete photos then you would EXPECT these to be deleted from the cloud as well. UPDATE: Seems they don't get deleted any more after all.

[stephenhopkins]

Very well laid out process. Thank-You for sharing your knowledge.

[catlady]

Appreciate your videos and explanation about Google photos. Very easy to understand.

[chipsspells]

THANK U for a clear and concise explanation.

[umaratik]

Thank you this is totally change my life 😉

[norahhoeppner]

I'm so grateful to have found your videos! I have an iphone. In Google photos, I confirmed that backup is complete. Then I went to google photos 'apps & devices' >> 'free up space' (94% used on my phone) and it said I had thousands to delete from device. I clicked to delete them, but they are still on my phone and my google photos app still says 94% used on device. But when I repeat the process and click on "free up space", google photo says "nothing to free up". Please help:)

[curious_chriscr]

Thank you I was confused on whether it would keep the photos or not

[Awekoakai]

I stand corrected!!!! If I had watched this video first before the free up space video I would have known what those signs meant at bottom of pic. I thought it meant that it was uploaded. So that’s why the pic disappeared from both places because it wasn’t done uploading lol geez

[jacquelinecrafford]

Hi thank you for this video! I just have a question...maybe I am missing the point but just want full clarity...
All my photos were previously stored on google photos...I then hard reset my phone. After that all my 3000 photos (already backedup) were back on my phone again which I understand it happened via the sync. But, if I delete all the photos on my phone....will it delete on the cloud as well? ☺️your help will mean alot xx

[odessawales]

How can u restore backup photos if google photos deleted them without your permission

[gabrielaaragon]

You’re awesome! Thank you so much for your help!
How can l open all the pictures from Photos to library in Google Photos, so l’ll be able to print them out?

[dywildatheart]

Amazing information, thank you so much .

[susananoriega]

Hello my question is when i want to erase a picture shouls i erase them from photos or google photos?
My phone sometimes doesn’t erase in any of them, i know it’s pretty full bec. i need to take a lot of pictures for work, pl can you explain it what’s the right way to do this?
Thank you
Nice video!