App request: automatically move newly created files from a folder (Camera) to another - General Questions and Answers

I'm looking for an app to automatically move any file that appears on the SD card in DCIM/Camera to another folder, e.g. Photos/Unprocessed.
Why? Because I want my photos automatically backed up to Google Photos, but only from the folders I choose. And Camera is not one of those folders. However, Google Photos automatically forces you to back up the DCIM/Camera folder if you want automatic backups at all, which is really dumb:
If you take multiple shots of a scene and want to keep all but one, EVERY shot will waste storage and bandwidth being backed up to Google Photos. Normally I take a bunch of shots of a scene, then when I have a moment go through them and keep only one and move it to a folder it belongs to, e.g. Photos/MyDog. I want that one backed up, but not the others.
maybe I *never* want certain pics to be backed up in the cloud unencrypted, e.g. photos of tax statements or other sensitive docs
maybe there are people in the photo who didn't give me consent to back up their image in any cloud
maybe I don't want to waste time and data backing up a ****ton of pics I know I'll delete. Even if I set the sync to only happen when on Wi-Fi, it's just a stupid waste.
Note that I filed a request with the Google Photos team for this feature like half a year ago, but it fell on deaf ears, so the only solution I see is this: make an app that as soon as a file is created in DCIM/Camera (the folder Google Photos watches), it moves it to another folder, so Photos won't back it up.

Related

App to sort images by their geolocation?

Anybody know if theres an app that will automagically move pictures taken in a geo location and move them to a folder or highlight them somehow? Every day after work I end up full of pictures that I need either deleted or archived on a daily basis.

Mass rename of local photos in Google Photos

I need to organise my photos. The way my camera app works is that it just uses the next available number (e.g. photo0001 photo0002 photo0003, etc) and just remembers the next number to use.
The issue with this is when you go back and delete photos, it leaves a blank "slot" (e.g. photo0008 photo0010 photo0011 photo0015, photos 9, 12, 13, and 14 were deleted), and if you ever reset your phone, the camera forgets and starts over from 0001, sees that number is already taken, and uses the next available number.
This results in your photos being in the correct order if you go by date taken, but a complete mess up you go by filename. I plan to fix this by using a mass-renamer that will rename them in order of date taken.
Issue with that is, I have no idea how Google Photos will handle this. It's suddenly going to see thousands of photos that are different from the version stored online (because their filenames now are different) and bundled of new photos which didn't exist before because they are existing photos that had their filename changed to one that wasn't in use before.
Will Google Photos be able to tell by performing some sort of visual check or using some sort of hash/checksum? Or is it just going to turn my album into a mess? What would be the best way to deal with this? I could turn off photo syncing, delete everything saved online, then re-enable it after I rename them, but that would mean I would have to re-upload all my photos and videos, my 64gb card is almost full and I am upgrading to 128, that would be a LOT of data to re-upload.

How do I access Google photo cloud storage

OK, so if I take a pic and immediately go to my Google photo app I can see the pic currently being uploaded to the cloud. Now if I delete that photo, it deletes it from the device, but how can I find/view the copy that just got saved to the cloud?
If it's done uploading, and you delete it within Google photos it gets moved to the trash. Gone from Google photos (still retrievable from the trash). Now if you take a pic and delete it from the camera app immediately after taking it, it probably wasn't uploaded and is gone.
When you first open Google photos the pictures that you are seeing are what is stored on the cloud. If you go to the top left menu (three lines) there's a device folder part, that's where you can see what's actually on your device. Make sense?
OK I did a little more experimenting. When I took a photo, I left the camera app and went to the Google photo app. I saw the spinning icon on the picture, then a cloud icon with a check mark which should indicate it's done uploading to the cloud, but when I deleted it, it just sent it to the trash without saving it on the cloud or on the device.
Then I tried deleting a pic I took yesterday. It asked me if I wanted to delete the device copy and if I did delete it I would still be able to view it from the cloud. So I deleted it from the device and I was in fact able to view it within the app.
So, even though I watched the newest pic get uploaded to the cloud, I must've still deleted too quickly to where it didn't save and just got trashed. I guess you have to let the pic sit for a while and "cement" itself in the cloud before deleting.
Thanks for responding quickly and helping me out
If you delete the photo from the Google Photos app then in essence you are deleting it from the cloud. Google Photos is your cloud.
If you want to free up storage on your phone then just go to settings in the photo app and hit free up storage. This way it removes it from the phone storage but leaves it in the Google Photos app.

Make Google Photos realize there are new images

Okay this is a weird one
Google removed free photo uploads except for those uploaded on older Pixels, so I want to sync all my images to my old Pixel to get free uploads. It's not about the money, it's about the philosophy.
I found resilio, a great app to sync files between devices in almost real time. Problem is: Google Photos does not see the new images until I reboot the device or change something in this folder in a file explorer app. So, if I for example create a dummy file and delete it, Google Photos will now see the new images synced to this folder. If I don't do anything except for the sync, the pictures will never be seen by the Photos app until I reboot.
So I thought, maybe I can push the system to somehow show the new pictures to the Photos app. I tried using tasker to move the new files to another folder, but failed because I could only manage to move the whole folder or a specific file, wildcards did not seem to work.
Another idea was creating and removing a dummy file in this folder via tasker, but Google Photos still did not take notice. It seems like I have to do this manually in my file explorer to get the system to notice the change...?
Now my only idea would be to restart my phone every few hours, but this can't be the solution
Any ideas where the problem might lie and how I can solve this?

Question GOOGLE PHOTOS

When I check the google photos app under photo settings/ back up & sync/ /back up device folders I don't see all the albums in my S22 gallery. Is anyone else having this problem?
jizreal said:
When I check the google photos app under photo settings/ back up & sync/ /back up device folders I don't see all the albums in my S22 gallery. Is anyone else having this problem?
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Click to collapse
That's known problem that users have with Google photos. I've looked into this on other forums. Google is not looking into fixing this any time soon.
I've tried multiple things but they really don't apply to what we are trying to do. For example i have a DJI (DRONE) folder that i want to back up but it's not even an option to select.
The only fix was to create a new folder in your "pictures" folder using a file explorer, and then transfer the pictures you want back up into that folder. Google photos will read the folders that are inside your "pictures" folder. You should now be able to backup that newly created folder. Hope that helps
I also wish there was a way to remove screenshots to be automatically backed up, unfortunately with Google photos there is no option to deselect the screenshot folder. Google photos is awesome in so many ways but these quirks are very annoying
mmafighter077 said:
I also wish there was a way to remove screenshots to be automatically backed up, unfortunately with Google photos there is no option to deselect the screenshot folder. Google photos is awesome in so many ways but these quirks are very annoying
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Not sure what you mean, but Photos does detect images in the screenshots folder.
maybe the 100GB one drive offer is better than. anyone know if it syncs perfectly??
The problem is with Samsung phones. On previous phone Huawei, I didn't had this issue. Because in DCIM folder were only photos that I took. Everything else were in Pictures folder.
This is really annoying!
chillsen said:
maybe the 100GB one drive offer is better than. anyone know if it syncs perfectly??
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Click to collapse
I use OneDrive and it works for me. It can be a bit confusing though so this explanation of how it works for me unfortunately must be a bit long. I do backup all except one or two folders on my computer to OneDrive. I don't remember the settings I might have initially put on OneDrive but here is what happens with my photos.
When I take a photo on my phone or do a screen capture on the phone, OD immediately uploads those to the cloud and then downloads them into a folder I have on my computer called "Camera Roll". So, within a few seconds to a minute of taking a photo or screenshot on my phone, those are available on my computer in the Camera Roll folder. Oddly when I then look at my pictures in OD, the photo will be saved there, but the screenshot will not. So even though OD syncs screenshots from my phone up to the cloud and then down to my Camera Roll folder on my computer, OD does not seem to save the screenshots in the cloud storage. But I end up with screenshots both on my phone and on my computer, so this is OK for me.
When someone sends me a photo in a message or email, those seem to get backed up by OD also. If I click the OD option to show photos from all folders, I do see those photos that were sent to me. I do get messages and emails both on my phone and on my computer, so I am not sure if it matters to OD if I first look at a photo received in a message on my computer or on my phone.
Once a photo is on my computer, if I edit it and save it to another folder on the computer, that copy will be backed up by OD also.
It gets interesting when deleting photos.
If I delete a photo from the Camera Roll folder on my computer, it is deleted from OD cloud storage also, but it is left in my gallery app on my phone. Of course, if I open OD on my phone and look, the photo is not there as it has been deleted from cloud storage.
If I delete a photo from my gallery app on my phone, as long as this photo has already been uploaded by OD, the only place it is deleted is on my phone. I like this because I can delete photos off my phone, but they stay in OD cloud storage and in my Camera Roll folder on my computer.
If I delete a photo in OD that has been previously uploaded from my phone’s camera and put into my computer’s Camera Roll folder, it is removed from OD and from the computer’s Camera Roll folder. It is left in my phone's gallery app though.
Hope this helps.
Will_T said:
I use OneDrive and it works for me. It can be a bit confusing though so this explanation of how it works for me unfortunately must be a bit long. I do backup all except one or two folders on my computer to OneDrive. I don't remember the settings I might have initially put on OneDrive but here is what happens with my photos.
When I take a photo on my phone or do a screen capture on the phone, OD immediately uploads those to the cloud and then downloads them into a folder I have on my computer called "Camera Roll". So, within a few seconds to a minute of taking a photo or screenshot on my phone, those are available on my computer in the Camera Roll folder. Oddly when I then look at my pictures in OD, the photo will be saved there, but the screenshot will not. So even though OD syncs screenshots from my phone up to the cloud and then down to my Camera Roll folder on my computer, OD does not seem to save the screenshots in the cloud storage. But I end up with screenshots both on my phone and on my computer, so this is OK for me.
When someone sends me a photo in a message or email, those seem to get backed up by OD also. If I click the OD option to show photos from all folders, I do see those photos that were sent to me. I do get messages and emails both on my phone and on my computer, so I am not sure if it matters to OD if I first look at a photo received in a message on my computer or on my phone.
Once a photo is on my computer, if I edit it and save it to another folder on the computer, that copy will be backed up by OD also.
It gets interesting when deleting photos.
If I delete a photo from the Camera Roll folder on my computer, it is deleted from OD cloud storage also, but it is left in my gallery app on my phone. Of course, if I open OD on my phone and look, the photo is not there as it has been deleted from cloud storage.
If I delete a photo from my gallery app on my phone, as long as this photo has already been uploaded by OD, the only place it is deleted is on my phone. I like this because I can delete photos off my phone, but they stay in OD cloud storage and in my Camera Roll folder on my computer.
If I delete a photo in OD that has been previously uploaded from my phone’s camera and put into my computer’s Camera Roll folder, it is removed from OD and from the computer’s Camera Roll folder. It is left on my phone though.
Hope this helps.
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this is what i was worried about. i am trying to find an auto backup strategy where it backs it up maybe weekly. i take a lot of photos and that means i also sift through and delete many so syncing cloud and pc would be a headache. i have my phone san-photos/video already auto backed up to my samsung cloud so i'm just looking for a media sync that works for my needs. thanks for sharing.
chillsen said:
this is what i was worried about. i am trying to find an auto backup strategy where it backs it up maybe weekly. i take a lot of photos and that means i also sift through and delete many so syncing cloud and pc would be a headache. i have my phone san-photos/video already auto backed up to my samsung cloud so i'm just looking for a media sync that works for my needs. thanks for sharing.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, because all photos taken get uploaded right away, and deleting a photo from the camera app does not delete it from OD, you end up with a lot of photos saved in OD that you don't really want. So yes, if you take hundreds of photos, this would be a pain. I am not sure of all the settings in OD though. Maybe you can have it backup only periodically or set it so a photo deleted on the phone also gets deleted from OD?
If I take a photo, it's not uploaded till I open photos: is this normal?
thegios said:
If I take a photo, it's not uploaded till I open photos: is this normal?
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Click to collapse
I am using OneDrive and immediately after I take a photo, that photo is uploaded to OD and downloaded to the Camera Roll folder on my Windows computer.
If I take photos on a hike in the woods and have no service, as soon as I get reconnected to cell service or wifi, the photos are uploaded.

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