You decide you want to free up storage on your phone so you go into Google photos and start deleting photos that you have already downloaded onto your personal computer. Some of those photos you have also shared in a particular folder on Google photos by uploading from your PC.
You notice that when you tap on the trash can icon it says that the photo will be deleted from all folders and albums you have shared it to. Surely Google would not go delete a photo that had gone through your PC?
Wrong! It turns out that Google matches up what you uploaded from your PC with what's on your phone and knows it's the same photo. When you go to your shared album, the photos you deleted are in the bin too. If you have already emptied the bin, either on the phone or on your PC, or 60 days have elapsed, those photos are gone from your album. Your only recourse is to re-upload from your PC.
I can understand the reason for this synchronised deletion. Say you shared a photo and now you regret it. It would be logical to delete from all places where it exists. However as implemented, Google is being heavy handed. There is no setting I can see to turn this behaviour off. To avoid accidental deletion from your album when you clear space on your phone, you should not use the trash can icon. Instead, use the actions Save to device, followed by Delete from device. This is far less convenient, but the latter might be done in bulk. Another way is to use a different app for deleting the photo from your device.
I have not experimented to see if the matching depends on some metadata in the JPEG that could be stripped out from your PC's copy. Maybe the device name?
You notice that when you tap on the trash can icon it says that the photo will be deleted from all folders and albums you have shared it to. Surely Google would not go delete a photo that had gone through your PC?
Wrong! It turns out that Google matches up what you uploaded from your PC with what's on your phone and knows it's the same photo. When you go to your shared album, the photos you deleted are in the bin too. If you have already emptied the bin, either on the phone or on your PC, or 60 days have elapsed, those photos are gone from your album. Your only recourse is to re-upload from your PC.
I can understand the reason for this synchronised deletion. Say you shared a photo and now you regret it. It would be logical to delete from all places where it exists. However as implemented, Google is being heavy handed. There is no setting I can see to turn this behaviour off. To avoid accidental deletion from your album when you clear space on your phone, you should not use the trash can icon. Instead, use the actions Save to device, followed by Delete from device. This is far less convenient, but the latter might be done in bulk. Another way is to use a different app for deleting the photo from your device.
I have not experimented to see if the matching depends on some metadata in the JPEG that could be stripped out from your PC's copy. Maybe the device name?
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