Manage Google Photo Backup

[sc10]

I am getting a big red warning notice every time I sign on to my Gmail that I am exceeding  my 15 Gb of Google Storage by 25%. Sounds like if I don't do anything about it, I will not be able to send and receive Gmail.  That is a scarily thought.

With about 10 Gb of pictures in Google Photo, I determine that might be a logical place to slim down.

It seemed like every picture I take with my Samsung phone, a back up copy is created in the Google Photo Storage. Here are my questions:

1) Where can I found the setting for this back up activity?

2) Is this for back up only or it is for syncing as well? My concern is if I remove pictures from the Google Photo, will the same corresponding pictures be remove from my phone storage. Or they would get sync back to the Google Photo again?

3) Can I conduct my own back up from my phone to an external storage and just forget this Google Photo back up?

[KellytheBelly]

Hello, @sc10. Here's how I would do it...Open Google Photos on your device. See your profile picture/initial icon at the very top right, click on that icon. Go to 'Photo Settings', See 'Backup' (you'll see your email address here), and 'turn off' backup with slider. As far as another option to store your photos/videos, you could get a memory card, and save photos/videos to this. Not an expert, just some hands-on familiarity. As a matter of fact, been up all night downloading my photos (zip files) to PC in order to clean up my nearly maxed-out phone. Tedious, tedious, tedious. Another suggestion is to keep on top of it, and don't do what I've done (note to self). D-:

[sc10]

@KellytheBelly  Thank you. So turn off backup from the phone. Move the pictures from Google Photo by deleting them or downloading them somewhere. After that, if I turn the backup back on, will the pictures still in the cell phone storage re-backup back to Google Photo? or the backup only kick in for new pictures?

[KellytheBelly]

If you resume backup it should pick up every photo/video on your device. 🙂

[sc10]

My next challenge is to backup the Google Photo and then delete it entirely. The only tool that Google offered to move the entire Google Phone seemed to be "Googe Takeout". From what I read online, "Google Takeout" has some issues. The backup you get from it is not really a copy of the original. What I understand some picture resolution is altered. Metadata is still there but somehow they are mixed together and not part of each picture anymore. So I am still struggling with the problem.