Avoid paying £1.59 a month to store photos in Google without deleting everything!

studyingitalian

I’m sure this is covered elsewhere but I’m not very techie and need help! I’ve had the email from Google that I’m running out of storage and they want £1.59 a month. I use Gmail as my main email. I have Google Drive but there isn’t much on there. I do have a lot of photos in the Google App. I already pay a monthly sub to Apple as I have my photos stored with them via my iPhone and iPad. I’ve got 11,500 photos since 2016. I know that’s a lot of family and holiday snaps, and I’m in the process of sorting them out and deleting, but it’s taking far too long. 

A few years ago, someone said they always use Google Photos so I stored them in the App, as well as having them with Apple. I regret this now as they seem to be synchronised. If I delete everything in Google Photos, which I don’t use or want now it’s no longer free, it deletes them from Apple too! 

My question is - can I get rid of the Google stored photos without deleting them from Apple? And so avoid paying £1.59 a month for something I don’t want?

pramsay13

It's unlikely that deleting your google photos will also delete them from Apple but if it is you will definitely be able to stop this happening and then delete your google photos (or just keep what is there that is below the free limit)

Google used to offer unlimited photo storage at slightly reduced quality so the advice did make sense. They have however recently capped that (although it is still free if you have a google phone).

RumRat

If you are using your phone to delete the pics then that could be the reason they are deleting from both. Have you tried logging into google on a PC and deleting your photos from there? 
If you don't want to use Google Photos to duplicate the iCloud backup, uninstall it from your iPhone, this won't lose your photos, you will still have access via Google photos online.

studyingitalian

Thanks for the useful suggestions which I will do. I need to get on with it as my storage on Google is 89% full. I don’t want my Gmail to stop working! 

I think I’m right in thinking deleting emails won’t make much difference. It’s deleting the photos I need to do.

Neil49

studyingitalian said:

Thanks for the useful suggestions which I will do. I need to get on with it as my storage on Google is 89% full. I don’t want my Gmail to stop working! 

I think I’m right in thinking deleting emails won’t make much difference. It’s deleting the photos I need to do.

The free allowance limitation only commenced at the start of June this year so any photos stored prior to then don't count unless they were stored at the highest level of quality. You may wish to reconsider where your storage has disappeared to inside 3 months unless you have taken a vast number of photos in that time.

This is from the Google website.

• Any photos or videos that you’ve backed up in high quality or express quality before 1 June 2021 won’t count towards your Google Account storage.
• Photos and videos backed up in original quality will continue to count towards your Google Account storage. Learn more about photo and video backup options.
• Photos backed up in original quality and then compressed to Storage saver quality (previously named High quality) after 1 June 2021, will count towards your Google Account storage.

A bit more investigation into your Google account wouldn't go amiss as somewhere within in it there should be a breakdown of your usage.

studyingitalian

Thanks.
I’ve been investigating and got this:

“Freeing up space
Allow Google Photos to delete 5,000 items? These items will be deleted from iCloud Photos on all your devices.”

Help! This looks as if it will all be deleted from my Apple account - presumably that’s the iCloud? Or is it only a Google iCloud? (It’s all phrased in an incredibly confusing way, no use to non techie people like me. I’m willing to have a go, but it could all be so much clearer!)

Neil49

I don't have an Apple account so can't comment on that.

Personally I would backup all my photos onto an external hard drive before doing anything but this assumes you have a pc which would enable you to run such a procedure. 

studyingitalian

What I’ve noticed is that I went to a lot of time and trouble deleting photos from the iPhone but everything I took got saved in Google Photos! So I might have say 50 sandcastle photos in Google Photos and only kept the best 2 or 3 in the iPhone! No wonder my Google Photos is filling up fast.

The other thing that happens is whenever I receive a WhatsApp, all the photos (eg cats and joke videos friends send) save into Google Photos, which I can really do without.

It’s such a mess that I would just like to get rid of Google Photos forever. Once I get onto the computer, instead of just using the iPad and the iPhone, I think I can sort it out by just deleting most of the photos in Google Photos.

Neil49, your backup idea is good. I am hoping to backup from the iPhone where it’s all edited, NOT from Google Photos with all the excess copies.

powerful_Rogue

Are you trying to delete the images from your phone gallery, or the google photos app?

studyingitalian

Good question! 

I started deleting in the Google Photos app. But the I realised that all the rubbish photos were still there, and how would I know which was the best one I kept on the iPhone? It means I have to do 5 years worth of choosing the best photo in a set all over again. It’s a nightmare which I wouldn’t have if I could just get rid of Google Photos forever. Does this make sense?

powerful_Rogue

Someone has already mentioned it, but i'm guessing the gallery on your phone is set to sync with both google and icloud. Thus deleting a photo from the gallery will delete it from both.

Try deleting a few photos from the google app and see what happens. The photos will go into a bin, which is then permanently deleted every 30 days - So there is the option to restore after.