
Google Photos will stop syncing to Drive - vanburen
https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2019/06/google-photos-drive-sync-stopping.html
======
mholt
Since I do not trust any cloud service with the master/only copy of my data
(and I do not trust my phone -- the origin of my photos -- as a permanent
storage device), I developed a tool called Timeliner which downloads all your
content from Google Photos and other online services to your own computer:
[https://github.com/mholt/timeliner](https://github.com/mholt/timeliner)

I run this on a cronjob and it adds all my photos to a timeline in conjunction
with my tweets and Facebook posts. It's got a few rough edges but should
(mostly) work as advertised.

I would love to have help maintaining it, especially now given this
announcement (because Timeliner does not require Google Drive).

One major limitation with the Google Photos API is that it's impossible to get
the location data from the photos through it. Timeliner tries to compensate
for this by allowing you to import your Google Location History, but this is
not ideal either. Edited to add (since there are a lot of the same question in
the replies): no, the EXIF metadata does not contain the location because
Google Photos API strips it out (it leaves most other metadata intact).

~~~
spacedog11
How can you trust your computer? What if your hard drive fails? How would you
recover your photos then?

~~~
namanyayg
> "Since I do not trust any cloud service with the master/only copy"

All photos still exist in the cloud, backed up on a hard drive. Multiple
copies are unlikely to fail at the same time.

~~~
doesnt_know
Cloud providers are notorious for automated systems that will lock you out of
your account, with no recourse and no ability to talk to a human about it.

------
the_af
My day job is programming and I'm obviously computer literate, so it's an
embarrassment to confess I don't understand:

a- the difference between Google Photos and Google Drive.

b- the difference between Google Photos and the folder titled "Google Photos"
in Google Drive.

c- whether I'll be able to backup/restore the pictures from my Android phone
to Google Drive.

d- whether this affects me at all.

Color me confused. And if _I_ am confused, I cannot imagine what regular users
will think of this.

~~~
giarc
I'm glad I'm not the only one!

From the G release, "These changes will let you easily choose where photos and
videos are stored across products." I want 1 product, one place for all my
stuff. Isn't that what Google One
([https://one.google.com](https://one.google.com)) was supposed to be? From
their promo copy "Your storage includes Drive, Gmail, and original quality
images in Google Photos."

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further.

~~~
ghostpepper
This is a quote from star wars, in case anyone was wondering

~~~
dankohn1
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpE_xMRiCLE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpE_xMRiCLE)

------
ocdtrekkie
So to address "confusion" with this, they're going to leave users with two
separate copies of all their photos which no longer sync so that when you
think you deleted a photo you might find it in your account again somewhere
else later...

I don't feel like this is a solution that adequately addresses user confusion,
but rather arbitrarily introduces it.

~~~
jey
How does it currently work if I have sync enabled, then I "delete" a photo in
the Google Drive UI? Does it get deleted from Photos too?

~~~
Kique
And that is why this change is happening, it's confusing to users. Currently,
I want say that if you delete a photo in Drive, it will delete it in Photos
too?

------
jefftk
Can we switch the URL to [https://www.blog.google/products/photos/simplifying-
google-p...](https://www.blog.google/products/photos/simplifying-google-
photos-and-google-drive/) since that's the announcement for the consumer side
of Drive/Photos?

(Disclosure: I work for Google, but commenting here isn't my job)

~~~
KerryJones
This needs to be upvoted more for the consumer.

Last part that's unclear, my Pixel auto uploads to Google Photos -- is that
changing? (does anyone know?)

~~~
muro
If you have photos app installed and enable syncing, there is no change, it
will continue to upload your photos. The change is (AFAIK) that they will only
show up in photos in the future, not in drive (if you enabled that).

~~~
slenk
But without that link it will be a lot harder to automatically back up the
photos to more storage areas

~~~
muro
Yes

------
DubiousPusher
Dang. That's the one way I've found to get all my photos syncing to a folder
on my desktop. I find it very useful to take a picture on my phone and then
have it magically appear in my desktop file system later.

Edit:

> You’ll still be able to use Backup and Sync on Windows or macOS to upload to
> both services

Wait, I'm confused. The only way I could find to do this before was to enable
dumping my photos to Drive and then allow 'Backup and Sync' to sync that
folder. I must be missing something.

~~~
ulfw
Sadly Backup and Sync is a buggy mess for me on MacOS. I have one picture
apparently that keeps the app spinning and trying to upload but never does. It
doesn't fail either. It just keeps spinning. Of course there is no log for me
to see which photo the culprit might be (and hence reencode it or move it out
from that photo folder)

~~~
dontblink
There is a log: [https://support.google.com/drive/forum/AAAAOxCWsTo-
pyqVwGqJj...](https://support.google.com/drive/forum/AAAAOxCWsTo-
pyqVwGqJjI/?hl=en&gpf=%23!topic%2Fdrive%2F-pyqVwGqJjI)

~~~
ulfw
Thanks a lot!

Unfortunately besides millions of lines of continuous log_decorator.pyo:137
Entering in DoesAutoLaunch(). log_decorator.pyo:137 Returning from
DoesAutoLaunch().

there is nothing indicating why the batch process starts and immediately quits
and then restarts again.

Fun

At least I can delete the 240MB log file now while I search for another
service that lets me backup my 75GBs of photos and displays them neatly on an
iPad/iPhone.

------
trevor-e
I have a nightmare story regarding this. I went on a two-week vacation and
took a bunch of photos, and unknowingly had the "automatically sync on WiFi"
option turned on. Well, at one point in time I did intentionally enable that,
but forgot since I hadn't used the Google Photos app in over a year. Anyway, I
get back from my vacation and realize I haven't received a personal email in
the last 10 days. It took me a while to figure out Google Photos used up all
my Drive storage, which then caused ALL my emails to silently bounce. No
message or warning from Google that I had reached my storage limit, and of
course there was no way to recover my lost emails.

------
SECProto
When I read this title, I immediately assumed they were eliminating the "free
unlimited ("high quality") photo storage for android users". I expected this
because recent advertising for the Pixel 3A explicitly advertised that as a
feature - so I thought it might be going away for non-pixel-owners.

Instead, after reading the article, I am just confused. I have no idea which
photos are on drive and which are on photos - are they going to count double
towards my used storage?

Regardless, I'm happy to have all my photos backed up elsewhere. And maybe
this is the last piece of motivation I need to finish setting up a self-hosted
cloud - storage is certainly cheap enough.

~~~
wutbrodo
Earlier I think they were just surfacing the same photos in both places
without using up storage (that would be a pretty shitty feature). Pointless,
perhaps, but harmless, and maybe useful for those who wanted to be able to use
driver's more sophisticated organizational capabilities.

As far as the change, I can't imagine it will suddenly start counting against
your quota. They're just stopping the behavior of syncing between the two
folders.

------
ilikehurdles
I'm not surprised this is happening. This is partly why I never permitted
Google to put my photos in their Google Photos solution. My photos are
_files_, with file extensions, taking up varying sizes, belonging inside of
folders. Google Photos treated them as higher level items in some SaaS
product, like posts on Instagram or something. If you wanted archival -- true
archival -- then you shouldn't store your media in Google Photos any more than
you should store it on a facebook timeline.

------
hawski
Arrrgh!

I'm already planning to get off ChromeOS (unscrew the write protect screw!)
and Google services, but this takes it one point further.

If they remove this option, they should better integrate Google Photos with
Chromebooks. Chromebooks have somewhat buggy Drive integration, but it's
there. Android at least have it better, because if you can select files from
Drive, you can do the same with Photos. GMail finally has proper integration
with it.

I also used the integration to move some photos to Photos, because it is was
easy on a Chromebook.

With current resource hungry GMail, Maps and Photos low end Chromebooks are
almost unbearable. And that was supposed to be their niche.

------
modzu
DO NOT use google photos. it is complete and utter trash.

 _there is no way to download all your photos once they are "backed up" to
google._

if they called it "transfer to google" that would be fine, but using the
terminology "back up" which implies an ability to "restore" is a class-action
in the waiting. the app actively _deletes_ the photos from your phone, puts
them into their cloud app, and then you are forced to interface with the cloud
app to actually do anything with them.

i have years of my life "backed up" into google photos and no way to download
them to a computer for printing, editing, sorting, etc, except _one by one_!

the only pseudo-official way to get all of them was via drive, and it already
fails for large collections (i haven't read why they are discontinuing it but
maybe something related).

are you kidding me? thanks google.

~~~
demonllama
What about google takeout -
[https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout](https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout)

~~~
modzu
thanks for the link, will try this!

------
petepete
This is a good thing.

I've had an ongoing support ticket with Google One for the last six weeks
about syncing. The entire process is just broken.

I have a normal-ish workflow; take photos with my camera, process on my MBP
and export to a folder that Google Backup and Sync is meant to sync with
Photos.

What actually happens is some files sync and others don't, GBaS then informs
me "15 files couldn't be added to Photos, they are in your Google Drive taking
up 45mb" and gives me a list of files. No info on what went wrong, no error,
no clue. Then I'm left to manually pick up what's left. But the problem isn't
with 'my' stuff, I send the photos to Google and they're meant to organise
them. That all works, the problem lies between Photos and Drive.

It's frustrating because individually, both are fine. I'd go as far to say as
Photos is great. But give me a tool dedicated to photos please Google.

------
hbosch
> We heard feedback that users were confused by the connection between Photos
> and Drive.

...

> Currently, G Suite users can choose to sync Photos to Drive. This means that
> when they upload a file to Photos, it’s automatically uploaded to the Google
> Photos folder in Drive. Once these changes go into effect, this folder will
> stop receiving updates. It won’t go away; it will just stop syncing with
> Photos.

How does this solution solve the problem stated above!? Have they done any
actual user research on this? Surely there is a better UX to solve for this
rather than just totally severing the connection between Photos and Drive. I
am glad to hear that my photos won't be lost in this.

I'm sure a vast majority of Google Photos users are mobile only, and so this
change will be more or less invisible. But, jeez. You'd think this whole issue
could be resolved with a single helpful tooltip...

------
benaduggan
> Since photos and videos will no longer sync across both products, items
> copied in Original Quality will count towards your storage quota in both
> Drive and Photos.

This is absolutely ridiculous, I feel that they should have just continued the
idea that photos is a view layer on top of storage. Now I guess I'll just have
to give them more money for more storage now that all my photos will double
count towards my quota if I choose to use both services.

~~~
sciurus
According to the consumer announcement

> If you use Backup & Sync to upload photos and videos to Drive and Photos, it
> will upload a copy to each service, but it will not take up duplicate
> storage.

~~~
benaduggan
Maybe I'm missing something here, but how will photos taken on my phone, and
uploaded to Google Photos, be synced to Google Drive now? Backup and Sync
seems to only deal with files on a Mac/Windows (yikes) client syncing to
Drive/Photos, not the other way around?

~~~
sciurus
I think the point of the announcement is to tell you that they _won 't_ be
synced to google drive now.

------
cotelletta
Proving once and for all that the proper answer to "but people love our
products" is "until you shut them down, you utterly useless twats".

Android to Google Drive to Desktop photo sync was one of the few things that
actually worked perfectly, which I set up for family members. Now I have to
explain to them why their expensive phone, laptop and desktop can't fucking
copy a picture from one to the other. But I'm sure there's some shitty,
intolerable Fischer-Price web UI in which you can't do jack.

------
Lutzb
Wow, I can't really see a reason for Google to implement this change. Now
photos are locked on Google Photos with no simple way of creating backups on a
local machine via Google Drive?

~~~
fooey
Yeah, their FAQ just says: "To download all your items from Google Photos, you
can use the Download your data page."

This feels pretty gross to me. I can understand them wanting to make the
separation clearer, but they should have had a sync solution in place first.

------
amitport
So... Can we get Picasa back?

~~~
fooey
No kidding, now Google provides no method at all for mass syncing photos back
down?

Is this a pivot to leverage photos for ecosystem lock-in?

~~~
muro
I think only takeout does it, unfortunately.

------
AnssiH
I have used a phone=>Photos=>Drive=>computer setup for several less technical
people to have their photos sync from their phones to computers automatically
so they can use local apps to browse and edit them.

I guess I'll have to migrate them to some other scheme...

~~~
Lutzb
That's exactly our gsuite workflow. Support technicians take pictures on their
phones and we use synology cloud sync to backup the Photo folder on Google
Drive to our the home folder on our file server.

------
dnr
Since I haven't seen it mentioned yet:

[https://github.com/gilesknap/gphotos-
sync](https://github.com/gilesknap/gphotos-sync)

is a command-line tool (in Python) that downloads (incrementally) your Google
Photos content directly using the Photos API, not through Drive. I just set it
up recently.

The two main caveats are the lack of location info and that it won't re-
download photos that have been edited.

------
8ytecoder
That’s literally the only reason I picked Google over anyone else. Switching
to iCloud I guess. I have mentioned this before - it’s not about privacy. One
mistake is what it takes to either them blocking you or you locking yourself
out of your account. The only safeguard is to keep a downloaded copy that’s
accessible. I do that with Photos+Drive sync. Similarly for email, contacts
...etc. Google is stripping away that.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
The problem with iCloud Photos is that you can't share albums with non-Apple
users.

~~~
virusduck
You can, actually! You have to use the custom URL that is generated.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
That makes the album visible to everyone who has the URL, not just to specific
users. On top of that, it's impossible to change the URL.

------
dddddaviddddd
Biggest Google Photos API (replacing this for backup use cases) complaint is
that geotags are stripped.

~~~
mholt
Gah, yes, I hate this. We are discussing workarounds (other than associating
with your Google Location History) here:
[https://github.com/mholt/timeliner/issues/38](https://github.com/mholt/timeliner/issues/38)

Google Photos API bug report (not that it'll do anything):
[https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/80379228](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/80379228)

------
techntoke
Please don't do this. You are not actually solving any problems with this
change. You are simply making it more difficult for users to backup/sync their
photos.

I use this daily. I am a big fan of Google Photos currently but that may
quickly change if this is implemented. I currently use rclone on Linux to
backup my Google Photos. It is great and I can modify or delete my photos from
any device within Google Photos and then have the changes synced to my desktop
and backup service. What you are doing will make it a lot more difficult to
backup my pictures or keep a copy saved locally.

------
tjr225
Anyone looking for alternatives- I've been using Flickr pro and loving it.
It's cheap, no longer requires a yahoo auth, and works really well.

I initially resisted when they changed their pricing scheme and set up my own
"self hosted" solution. After about 5 months of this I decided I missed Flickr
and that it was worth the 60$ a year or whatever(I honestly don't know).

Not affiliated in any way but I do hope they get more customers and stick
around, it's a good service.

~~~
jmathai
Flickr's a decent alternative to Google Photos but is not comparable to the
combination of Google Drive + Google Photos.

The combination they're deprecating is not offered anywhere else.

~~~
tjr225
Can you explain what the benefit of syncing between google photos and drive
is? Is it just another backup?

~~~
jmathai
It means I primarly use Google Photos and seamlessly have every photo in
Google Photos backed up on my NAS at home with no extra work. I also prefer my
photos to be organized in a folder structure (which I've also automated) and
the Drive integration lets me do this.

Long answer: [https://medium.com/swlh/my-automated-photo-workflow-using-
go...](https://medium.com/swlh/my-automated-photo-workflow-using-google-
photos-and-elodie-afb753b8c724)

~~~
tjr225
Hmm, this seems similar to what I do with Flickr.

I have my NAS mounted to my MacBook where I process photos and transfer them
to my NAS, the Flickr auto uploadr puts them up on Flickr. I wish this would
be possible from my NAS which may be something I am missing.

I suppose you lose the ability to go from Phone -> GPhotos -> Gdrive -> NAS.
I'll check out the medium post when I'm home though.

------
haunter
Is there a site where people can bet when do Google shutdown products? I'm
curious what's the o/u on Stadia right now

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
Please don't post snark that's completely irrelevant to the article.

~~~
AimForTheBushes
It is kinda relevant since there's at least 17 google services biting the dust
this year.

------
iamsb
I wonder if now it is good time to start a service which helps you host all
important stuff - mail, picture books, contacts - and so on with offline
backups which are under your control. Essentially ship me a tape every 6
months or so which has all my content, encrypted at rest.

~~~
andrewmunsell
I've been using NextCloud hosted on my personal NAS, and recently even
switched over to using a todo manager that uses CalDAV so I can use my
NextCloud server for personal task management. Backups are done through restic
to a couple cloud providers, and honestly this is the hardest part to get user
friendly because there's no UI (yes, I know Relica exists but I don't want to
pay monthly for it and use my own storage).

At this point everything (files & photos, calendar, contacts) but my email
(which is with FastMail) is self hosted or backed up on my NAS (and
consequently, the cloud storage backup). Home automation is also all done
through Home Assistant and local Z-Wave devices (I used SmartThings way back
when, but switched to HA).

Though it's not easy enough for non-tech-literate people to do, I think it's
close. Maybe a hosted NextCloud instance + auto backups would be good enough
for most people.

~~~
iamsb
This is an interesting idea. Do you have longer form post which explains how
someone can set this up? Also how do you protect your NAS over the internet? I
am not extremely concerned about security, but some network layer security
will be good to have. I will be keen to know more about your setup.

------
Causality1
Much as I loathe Google's ADHD, I've had more than one female friend call me
in a panic after finding out their nudes were ending up on Google Drive with
no action on their part and they couldn't get photo upload to turn off and
stay off.

~~~
byproxy
They're still getting uploaded to cloud storage on Google Photos. What's the
difference? Is Google Photos somehow more private?

------
RcrdBrt
Isn't it just for paying G Suite customers?

------
iscrewyou
I see they are going the Photos for the Mac and iCloud Drive route. Meh. It
makes sense but it was a feature for Google Drive. Now it just seems like an
annoyance for people to try to deduplicate their Photos.

------
intopieces
So if I understand this correctly, you now have to explicitly put photos you
obtained outside of your Google devices (and therefore stored in Google Drive)
into Google Photos, a service that lets you share / view photos.

This change makes sense to me because it mirrors what I do on my computer, but
it seems like a step back from the idea that mobile and desktop/laptop
paradigms are supposed to be merging. It seems like that’s what they were
trying to do, but it was too confusing so they changed it.

------
wakkaflokka
This disappointes me.

I finally got my home backup system setup to my liking, and it's super simple
and requires little to no effort on upkeep:

1\. Google Photos synced to Google Drive. 2\. Google Backup & Sync installed
on the computer. 3\. Backblaze Personal Backup software installed on the
computer.

Every time I take a picture, edit a document, etc., it's automatically and
effortlessly synced to Backblaze.

I had a Linux Box with Restic installed, but required more effort than I
wanted to put in.

Now I'm going to have to rethink how I backup my 40k+ photos.

------
lordnacho
This is pretty confusing.

What I'm doing at the moment is I use foldersync on all my devices, basically
mine and my wife's mobile phones.

But I sync the photos onto gdrive. It's only later that I discovered photos
automatically looks through your gdrive and shows you your timeline and does
fancy, spooky face recognition.

Which is working at the moment, but will this flow be affected? Sounds like
maybe not as they are talking about some sort of separate photos storage that
goes to gdrive, not the other way.

------
apetresc
As far as I can tell, this announcement is _only_ referring to GSuite users
(i.e, work accounts). Their rationale explicitly calls out "consumers" (i.e
Gmail/personal accounts) as having a different use case. I don't believe it
will apply to end users, unless you've got a personal GSuite account for your
own custom domain.

~~~
AnssiH
The non-GSuite announcement is here (as linked from the linked article):

[https://www.blog.google/products/photos/simplifying-
google-p...](https://www.blog.google/products/photos/simplifying-google-
photos-and-google-drive/)

~~~
apetresc
Damnit :(

~~~
toomuchtodo
The Apple ecosystem welcomes you with open arms.

I store every photo and video I’ve ever taken [hundreds of GBs, first photos
are from my teens in high school circa 1997] in Apple Photos; highly recommend
it. Yes, you pay a bit for the storage. Yes, it’s a closed ecosystem. Yes, I
also backup my originals to Backblaze. But deprecation, ever, is highly
unlikely while the UX is top notch. More good things coming for photos in iOS
13!

~~~
ChristianBundy
Or if you'd prefer to host your own media, SyncThing!

[https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Not as good as Apple Photos unfortunately (for photos and video), and I say
this as a proponent of SyncThing [1]. On device facial recognition, album
sharing and syncing, etc.

Most people’s time is worth paying for something that just works.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20160755](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20160755)

------
therealmarv
It never worked really on my side. It's clunky internally and I think a lot of
corner cases are not well tested.

The worst part is that Google Photos is a dead end. Like put photos into a
hole which you can only edit with Google internal tools. Not ideal for all
creators and more professional photographers although I'm a big fan of Google
Photos.

~~~
jmathai
It's not the most reliable but it worked pretty well.

The Google Drive sync they're deprecating today is what made Google Photos not
a 'dead end'. I've been using it for 3 years and am really bummed that this
means I'll have to give up using both Drive and Photos.

------
president
Does anyone know if Photos is actually profitable for Google or is it just a
loss leader to get people on the Google platform? It's really hard to
understand how they can support a service that allows unlimited photo uploads.
Makes me wonder if they will need to charge for it someday in the future.

------
makerofspoons
Seems like an opportunity to write a Lambda function or similar to sync your
photos using their respective APIs. I wonder if there are any web hooks
available for Photos that you could set to trigger the function or if it would
just need to run every 15 minutes or something.

------
cmurf
I have an Android One phone. When I take video, it appears only in Google
Photos, but cannot be played, says it's processing. Doesn't matter what
platform or browser, the video can only be downloaded, not played within
Photos.
[https://support.google.com/photos/thread/66336?hl=en](https://support.google.com/photos/thread/66336?hl=en)

Google Photos is terrible. Bad UI. Bad organization. Slow. And useless for
videos.

------
skybrian
I'm wondering how this affects Chromebook users? Uploading photos off a USB
stick already isn't easy.

------
gandalfian
But the only way I've found to attach a google photo to a gmail email is via
the drive folder? Now what?

------
vanous
This means rclone will stop working. Thanks for the reason to push me to move
away from gphotos and gmail...

------
mandarlimaye
One big missing feature in photos is OCR. In drive you can search images by
the text in them.

------
womd
... oh man.... So trade features to prevent confusion.... not a fan of that..

------
hitekker
Is there a better free alternative or should I just pay for iCloud?

~~~
jypepin
I recently switched back (again) to iOS from Android and the backend was so
painful, I decided to pay for iCloud and have things backed up, swearing never
to go away from iOS again (still think it's a better platform after multiple
switches back and forth).

Really happy with it so far. Simplest way I've found to be able to get my
photos and other stuff synced between multiple devices + family and friends
(through shared albums)

~~~
hitekker
Thanks for your perspective! I'm not leaving iOS anytime soon so iCloud is
indeed my best option.

------
mcwhy
This feature is (ab)used heavily by pirate video/image sites

------
flattone
I can't wait to stop using Google services.

Complete \- all Google stuff backed up \- replacement/self service path
identified \- explain to friends and family over past year or two

Incomplete \- libre phone \- protonmail 50% - Non internet regular digital
camera (older)

~~~
discordance
I hear this every day on HN and i'm with you, but I still appreciate how much
Google have given us with Android/Gmail/Search etc over the years

------
spacedog11
They could have at least kept the option for people who want this feature, and
turned off Cloud sync by default. Just removing the whole feature seems
excessive.

------
bin0
I used to use google photos. But then, I found that it was building facial
profiles of every one in my pictures, and creating "albums" thereof. I didn't
ask for that, and it's creepy as all get-out. Good-bye, google photos.

