Samsung phone & Google photos

caveman38

I need to free up space on my mobile and need help.
Both phone taken and WhatsApp photos are stored on my phone and are all visible on the photos app of my google account visible from my PC.
If I remove photos from my phone I can see that they also disappear from my google account after each scheduled backup. That is OK for rubbish photos but I need to free more space.
Is the only way to backup the photos from the google account to external source and then remove perhaps the earliest photos from the phone. If that is the correct way, then. From the google account, where is the option to backup to external source and is there a facility to remove photos then for a certain time period instead of singularly deleting them. 

Neil_Jones

The photos shouldn't go from your online Google account if you remove them from your phone, that defeats the whole point of them being "backed up".

caveman38

Well I removed 100 or so yesterday from the photos app on my phone and when I did a manual backup this morning I can see they are not on my photos app o my Google account on my PC.
I do agree that is not what is supposed to happen. What is amiss?

\\\\\\\\i have just see that when I delete a photo using dustbin on phone. The prompt says "Remove from Google Account and synced devices?" It doesn't show an option to just remove from phone.

dipsomaniac

If you delete photos from Google photos they will go into Google photos bin and be permanently deleted after 60 days. 

You can free up space within the apps settings.  As you also need a local backup I connect my phone to pc once a month and transfer photos from camera folder/WhatsApp folder on phone to pc. This frees up space and provides a additional backup

neilmcl

Select the pics you want to delete then click the 3 dots on the top right of the screen and choose Delete from device. This will remove the file from the phone but keep it in your Google account.

RumRat

caveman38 said:

Well I removed 100 or so yesterday from the photos app on my phone and when I did a manual backup this morning I can see they are not on my photos app o my Google account on my PC.
I do agree that is not what is supposed to happen. What is amiss?

\\\\\\\\i have just see that when I delete a photo using dustbin on phone. The prompt says "Remove from Google Account and synced devices?" It doesn't show an option to just remove from phone.

If you are using the Google photos app to view and delete your pics they will be deleted from Google. The app has the facility to clean up your phone by deleting anything that's been backed up to GP from the phone.

Bigphil1474

OP, do you have a micro sd card slot - my phone has a small memory capacity given the crap I get through WhatsApp, but all my camera stuff goes onto an sd card which reduces the frequency I need to make space on the phone. 

caveman38

Thank you everyone for your advice. Your answer Neil seems to be the one that answers my problem of cleaning my phone of unwanted photos but leaving them on my Google account.
I just need to fathom out how to download all my photos from PC Google account to an external hard drive (in case Google has a major issue) Does anyone know where the option is please. 

neilmcl

caveman38 said:

Thank you everyone for your advice. Your answer Neil seems to be the one that answers my problem of cleaning my phone of unwanted photos but leaving them on my Google account.
I just need to fathom out how to download all my photos from PC Google account to an external hard drive (in case Google has a major issue) Does anyone know where the option is please. 

There's an option in Google Photos settings to "Export Your Data". I think it creates an archive zip of what you want and then you can download the archive and save it to an external source. I've not used the facility myself.

ballyblack

Its called 'Google Take out'

& yes google that term for instructions