Important: Instructions on how to force google photos to reindex your library and show all information properly can be found at the end.
Google photos is a notoriously broken app on android due to its oversimplification of various processes, such as no manual photo scan feature, no duplicates remover, and a lack of proper EXIF metadata enforcement. I don't know if it's the same on other brands of phones, so I'm posting this here, but hopefully this will find well the power users of google photos.
I have a large library of photos from my various travels over the past few years using smartphones. (I really only started taking pictures seriously in 2020) My library amounts to 3072 photos and videos, or 57GB. This isn't nearly as much as people who've been taking pictures for longer, and especially professional photographers, but it does pose a challenge for indexing. Google photos is not a program I perceive to be designed for the power user, which in this case I am. Because of this it's very easy to confuse it. Simply removing your microSD card, adding pictures to it, and reinserting it into the phone can cause google photos to scatter your photos and videos across different days, meaning that pictures from any given day will be scattered across multiple, this is first seen when pictures you've taken on the day of transferring show under the "Yesterday" heading, despite showing the proper date under the information tab. Included are some screenshots with a demonstration of this. (These screenshots were taken on March 13th, 2023)
I've spent around 3 hours last night (March 13th, 2023) and today (March 14th, 2023) attempting to solve the problem, and have come up with a temporary solution. If this issue happens to you, here are the steps to solve it (if your photos are on your internal storage, you'll have to copy them off your phone, delete the folder, and re add them instead of the SD card procedure.)
1. After removing your SD card from your phone to transfer files, either uninstall and reinstall google photos, or clear the app data.
2. Set up google photos as normal. Turn on backup.
3. Transfer the photos and videos you'd like to onto your SD card.
4. Insert the SD card into your phone and restart the phone (On the LG V60 this is required to recognize the SD card after it is ejected or removed. The SIM card is hot swappable, the MicroSD card is not. If you require hot swappable SD cards, consider purchasing a USB-C reader)
5. Wait for google photos to index the contents of the memory card. It may take up to 3 hours depending on the speed of your SD card and the number of photos and videos you have.
6. Check for duplicates. Sometimes google photos will misinterpret the data and re upload it, causing a duplicate to form. This may be more likely to happen if any of your photos are:
• Lacking EXIF metadata.
• Are stored in the HEIC format.
• Already have duplicates - it's more likely to form more.
• Have non-standard file names.
7. Your photo library should be indexed properly now. Scroll through your library and check if it's recognized all photos in google photos as also being stored on your device. If this isn't the case, you may want to let it process your photos for another hour or so.
If anyone has found a more reliable way to do this, feel free to share! I'm hoping this will help anybody struggling with Google photos formatting.
Related
[Q] Can't access "My Photos" - via Gallery - on my microSD card anymore; HELP!
I don't know WHAT I may have done, but a few weeks ago, I updated my Droid 1's ROM to one of Bugless Beast's variants... and in the process, must have forgotten how to reselect my Gallery settings to recognize My Photos directory on the SC Card. I only get one folder with a bunch of logos in it, and that's it.
I can access all files and folders on my SD Card, and can even open each desired image - one-at-a-time in most file managers, but - try as I can, I can't seem to recall how to get Gallery to "see" the others on the SD card.
I even moved everything from the SD Card to my computer's hard drive (some 9 GB of files...) and did a format of the card - thinking it needed a wicked cleaning. Moved everything back, and - business as before... as in: "no luck". Still can't access any of the photo or movie files within Gallery.
...any takers??
Try as I might, I can't seem to find ANY location of a cache or data reference to Gallery. I used to be able to simply view ALL file folders that contained images... and now, it seems to be limited to a select few that have nothing to do with the "My Photos" folder or its respective sub folders. I wiped the cache and data on the device a good half dozen times prior to installing the latest Bugless Beast ROM V0.5, and yet - I still can't get it to "see" any of the desired image files on the microSD card. I even wiped all data on the card, formating it, and reinstalled all of the files. Still, no luck.
As an added bit of frustration, I attempted other ROMS, and had similar issues. Wasn't like this before I installed the latest 2.2...!
UPDATE... What's more, I also used to be able to select one of my sound files on my MicroSD card, and make it my ringtone, as well as assign similar audio files as alerts, etc. Now - I can't.
As my kids often text... "WTFIGO...?!?"
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Feel free to comment here, in this venue - so it might assist others, as well as post me - directly, to: [email protected]
Thank you for your kind assistance with this matter.
UPDATE STATUS REPORT:
After many attempts at trying different ROMS (Miui... VERY buggy; ShadowROM, Liquid Frozen Yogurt) I STILL had the same results - where only a few images still showed up in my Gallery (when I knew that NOT to be the case) and none of my audio files would save as ringtones, regardless of what I tried... I opted to go to "plan B" and to remove all files, reformat and reinstall the data to the 16 GB MicroSD card, resulting in the very same as before. VERY upsetting as noted earlier.
As I happened to have an extra 2 GB microSD card kicking around, I figured it wouldn't hurt to try to copy from my desktop - a few images of various kinds, as well as some audio files, and copy them into similarly desired and titled folders on the 2 GB card... then install same directly into the Droid 1.
Well, problem SOLVED. It was the ol' 16 GB microSD card. For future reference, it is marked as follows: "MicroSD HC C2 16 GB C16G Japan". I got this for my Samsung Omnia... a few years ago. I guess they really DO wear out after a while! Shame that. At least it's figured out! Thanks for listening to my rant...
Hi, I have been searching through Google extensively regarding a problem my SD card has but I none of them exactly describe my problem.
So I just recently bought a Strontium class 10 32GB card from an online web shop (like eBay) and I've been reading about stuff like SD scamming, but I don't think this is the problem I have since I have already used up 20GB of the alotted 29GB, and I can still access files and media with no problems. I also have issues viewing photos stored in my internal storage, so the problem I just described applies to my external and internal storages.
THE PROBLEM:
I downloaded high resolution photos from Unsplash and all photos appear fine on my laptop. I transferred them to my phone's memory (SD and Internal) and used QuickPic to browse them but I found out that only 50-something of the 99 photos can be viewed. The problematic photos take up space but they don't show the picture when clicked, only a broken thumbnail icon can be seen. I tried to identify the problem by doing: a reboot; ejecting and mounting the SD; formatting the SD; removing files like .nomedia (if this is even related); doing a factory reset; using a different card; and using ES file explorer but I still can't see some of my photos.
USEFUL DETAILS:
The photos that have issues all exceed 5000px in either width or height-- anything below that appears fine. I'm running Marshmallow 6.0, I tried using QuickPic, Google Photos and Sony's stock album app to open the pictures. I downloaded the pictures from the Unsplash website, MySplash (Android app) and Wally (Android app too). Everything from Wally can be viewed (even the mentioned corrupt photos from the Unsplash website) because the app only lets me download the smaller resolution (~778KP from an original of 12MP).
I have tried opening the unviewable photos on a Huawei P9, and I can see the problematic photos. I also tried inserting another SD card with the problematic photos to my phone, and I was still not able to view the photos.
My old no-brand phone had this problem too. It was running Jellybean and I used QuickPic there, too.
My current phone is a Sony Xperia XA Ultra, F3216, the dual-sim version. No custom ROMs, I'm using the stock Marshmallow.
Hi there and welcome to assist,
Unfortunately there is nothing about your question/device on XDA forum. Try a Google search first. Sorry for this late response.
You'll have to create an account to post in the main forums if you have any other questions.
Good luck
Many times a simple problem turns complex....... like now.
I take many photos on my phone, dSLR, GoPro, MavicPro, etc. and always shoot RAW. I do my post processing in Lightroom and Photoshop. On my S8+ I discovered LR is not importing the .DNG files. I find out it seems they need to be in the Camera Roll and I configured the stock camera to store them on the SD. I'm using the promo 256GB Samsung SD.
OK. I'll poke around with a file manager. In the rocess I find and try to delete an old folder. It asks for permission to access, I think no problem I've seen this many times before. HOWEVER, I can not grant permission the SD does not appear on the permissions screen!! Then I try a different software and see that the card is defined differently. One software even has it as a USB drive. Another simply calls it "Storage". In any case, I can't do much with it. The system seems to access it just fine in most cases.
I think OK I'll re-format it, dead end. How about merging it with the internal storage to have one huge single place for storage (not my favorite way since I may need to read the SD in a different device in case of a failure), this would solve my Lightroom issue as then I save .DNGs to the internal Camera Roll, nope.
I know I'm rambling.
The questions are:
Can this big SD be merged with the internal storage? Is there a size limit or is that not possible any more?
Anyone else using Lightroom Mobile and shooting RAW? What is your workflow?
3 years ago it was not possible i think, but maybe something was changed?
I got a lot of photos on my phone and everytime i'm moving them to SD card, Google Photos thinks that it need to be restored from the disk and in a moment I have them twice everywhere - on SD card and on phone memory. Confusing, don't You think? Every time i got my phone memory full of photos, even if my card is still empty (or also if i will have card full with duplicates).
Heres more - i need an high quality of theese photos, so i can't participate in Google Compression Program, or whatever gives me unlimited storage space, with lower quality. Not cool. But if i only could change the default folder to SD card... Maybe something bit more complicated, like with rooting and changing advanced setings?
I will be very grateful for any help.
I'm trying to move away from google photos and I have a ton of images from Google Takeout all sorted out. As such I need to know where do I put my photos in so that the default MIUI gallery app (and other apps of the like) will see them. Also is it possible to change photos saving location to an external SD card as my model is pretty susceptible to breaking and I need to make sure that my photos aren't truly gone.
Thanks in advance
The more technology becomes better/advanced/easier to use, the more people seem inept at using it.
Dude, put the photos on external sdcard in any damn folder you like. Android's mediastore will fully scan your storage on a let's say, a reboot and show the photos in any gallery app you can think of. Personally, I prefer F-Stop gallery app, since it has all I need to move/copy/rename/share or do anything with pictures or video files, and it does not depend on internal mediastore system. FStop gallery app even shows up as a file selector in default file explorer, if you use one.
Also make a full backup of the images to a disk in your PC. It's not that hard.
...and have an off-site backup obviously.
external sd or you can copy it to your pc
ok thanks for all the advice