Revised on 29/01/2021

Starting June 1, 2021, any new photos and videos you upload will count toward the free 15 GB of storage that comes with every Google Account or the additional storage you’ve purchased as a Google One member. Your Google Account storage is shared across Drive, Gmail and Photos.

This means that unlimited free storage for all your photos and videos will end on 21 June 2021. All existing photos will remain on Google Photos free of charge.

Note: this applies to high quality photos and videos and not original quality photos and videos. These already counts towards your storage limit.

Your photos start with the camera on your smartphone and the Google Photos app.

All Android and iPhone users can enjoy using Google Photos with a Google account.

Google Photos works with your smartphone and your Google account storing your photos and videos in the cloud with the option of freeing up storage space on all your devices once they have been uploaded.

Viewing your photos and videos

• On any device: Open the app called Photos
• On a computer: https://photos.google.com
• Speaking: Using the Google Assistant (“OK Google”), “Show my photos”[“on Device_Name”]

Features

Google Photos offers the following features:

Photos

• Memories (with slideshows showing the same week – 1 year ago, 2 years ago etc.)

Albums

• Lists of Favourites, People & Pets, Places, Things, Videos, Collages, Animations and Movies.
• Photos stored in other folders on the device (e.g. WhatsApp)
• Albums (Photo Sharing and created albums)

For you

• Create New (Album, Photo book, Movie, Collage, Animation)

Sharing

• All the photos you have shared with others and what others have shared with you.

Getting Google Photos to work with your device

Search for the Photos app which may already be installed on your device.

If not then install Photos from Google Play or the App Store (Apple).

Sign in with your Google Account

Tap the box in the upper right corner to reveal the sign in details and the email address of the Google Account. Check that your photos are being backed up by finding the notice: “Backup complete”.

This is also a good opportunity to Free up the space your photos are taking up on your device. Tap “Free up ??? MB“. You will then be ready to free up space on your device – tap again at the bottom to free up device space.

If these are not shown then sign in with your Google Account and check that the photos are being backed up.

This is a good opportunity to look at the Google Photos settings.

Tap the photos settings icon (cog) on the account pop up screen

Backup and sync

Make sure that…

• “Back up & sync” is turned on and then under this setting check the following….
• The correct email address of your Google account is shown
• “Upload size” is set to High quality (free unlimited storage until 21 June 2021) or Original quality if you are comfortable with your current storage allowance/ plan. Depending on how many photos you have you may want to opt for a yearly storage plan of 100GB (£15.99), 200GB (£24.99) or 2TB (£79.99).
• “Back up device folders” is set to include the folders on the device that you wish to show others from your Google photos. Therefore most users may not want to include the WhatsApp Photos in their library. For more information on this see the section called WhatsApp below.

Mobile data usage

Turn this on if you don’t mind using your mobile data plan to immediately backup or synchronise your photos when NOT on a Wi-Fi connection.

Note: Otherwise this will then use your mobile data allocation especially if you are taking photos outside of a Wi-Fi connection.

Using the Photos app

On opening Google Photos, you will see the following tabs at the bottom of the screen:

Photos | Search| Library

With either Photos selected, change the size of the thumbnails by using “Pinch-to-zoom” (Touch two fingers on the touch screen, and move them apart to zoom out, or together to zoom in).

Tap on a photo to open it, pinch-to-zoom can be used at any time to zoom in. Once zoomed in drag your finger in any direction to move around the photo. Double tap to bring the photo back to fit the screen. Then swipe left or right to go to the previous or next photo.

Photos are usually arranged with the most recent at the top. As you drag your finger up or down the screen, a side button will appear on the right side with up and down arrows. Quickly put your finger on this button and move it downwards or upwards. When browsing in the Photos tab in this way, a time line will appear showing the years with a larger pop up showing the current month and year position.

Create an Album

Photos can be allocated to an Album.

There are various ways to create and album but the common way is as follows:

1. Hold your finger on a single photo until the photos show a round grey circle in the top left corner. With this “select photos” view, the selected photo will get a tick in that circle and a new icon menu appears at the top of the screen.
2. In this “select photos” mode, tap individual photos to select them accordingly.
3. Tap the + button on the icon menu.
4. EITHER
   under “CREATE”, creates a NEW album if you don’t already have an album to add these photos to
   OR
   scroll down to the RECENT or ALL ALBUMS sections and select the album you want to add the selected photos to.
   Under create you have the option to create an Album, Shared album, Movie, Animation or Collage with the already selected photos.

Albums are collections of photos that have been tagged with an album name. This means that when you delete an album, you are in fact just deleting the tag name and not the photos that were in that album. The photos will still remain in the Photos tab at their respective time line position.

SlideShow

It appears that the Google Photos app on your mobile device no longer supports slide shows.

You can however find an app in the Play Store that creates slideshows.

Sharing

Photos

You can share your photos by selecting individual photos. Now tap the share button.

Albums

For multiple photos I recommend creating an album of these photos first and then opening that album to share the album.

To share an album, tap on the album to enter into the album, tap the three vertical dots, then Share.

Sharing Options

The two sharing options called “Get Link” and “SEND IN GOOGLE PHOTOS” don’t actually attach copies of the photos to the share. This means there is no usage of space or copies made.

Get Link

The safest way to share is to tap the “Get link” icon. This creates a link code which is then stored in the device’s clipboard. Then you can proceed straight to an app under the “Link copied. Share it in an app.” And it will open the app you select and paste the link for you. Leaving you to select a recipient and add any other wording in the message before you send it.

Any recipient of the message can click on the received link to view and download the photos. If they also have a Google account there will be an option to “Add to Library”. This then takes those same photos and adds them to their own library maintaining each photo’s exif information such as the date it was taken and the location. This way, no photos are downloaded or stored on the device.

SEND IN GOOGLE PHOTOS

You can send in Google Photo to any other user who has a Google Account. Use the magnifying glass icon to search by name, phone number or email address. Only those contacts in your address book with Google email addresses (or those with Google accounts) will be displayed. Note: you don’t need a Google email address to have a Google account.

The recipient will get a notification from Google. They can then select to “Add to Library”. This is recommended because the sender may at a later stage decide to delete the share. If that happens and the recipient has not yet added to their library then the recipient will no longer have access.

Other Share options

The other share options all involve making or attaching a copy of the photos in other apps. This can cause issues with bandwidth, data plans or space on both your and the recipient’s device.

WhatsApp

People attaching videos and photos to WhatsApp messages (instead of using “Create link” as explained above) clog up the memory on a device.

Many smartphone users have a restricted amount of storage space on their device and soon run out of space.

Keep your device’s storage space free from WhatsApp photos and videos BUT keep the ones you want in your Google Photos library.

Here’s how to do it.

1. In WhatsApp tap and hold on the media (image or video) you want to keep.
2. Tap the share icon
3. Tap on Upload to Photos
4. Tap the button “Upload”
5. Back on the conversation screen in WhatsApp, tap and hold on the media (image or video)
6. Tap the delete icon
7. Tap Delete for me

Otherwise, view and enjoy the media you receive then DELETE it!! – See Steps 5, 6 and 7 above.

Other Photo Viewing and Syncing Options

On some devices you can choose to use the manufacturers offering instead of or in addition to Google Photos.

We’ll briefly cover the popular brands below.

Samsung

Samsung’s app is called Gallery and works in a similar way to Google photos where photos and videos are synchronised to your account in the Samsung Cloud.

There are price plans for storage greater than the free 15GB, starting at £0.79 per month (50GB).

Viewing your photos and videos

• On any signed in Samsung device: Open the app called Gallery
• On a computer: https://support.samsungcloud.com and click on Gallery

iPhone

The Apple iPhone’s app is called Photos and works in a similar way to Google photos where photos and videos are synchronised to your account in Apple iCloud.

There are price plans for storage greater than the free 5GB, starting at £0.79 per month (50GB). The higher plans are for 200GB and 2TB.

Viewing your photos and videos

• On any signed in Apple device: Open the app called Photos
• On a computer: https://www.icloud.com/ and click on Photos

Huawei

Huawei’s app is called Gallery and works in a similar way to Google photos where photos and videos are synchronised to your account in Huawei Cloud.

There are price plans for storage greater than the free 5GB, starting at £0.79 per month (50GB). The higher plans are for 200GB and 2TB.

Viewing your photos and videos

• On any signed in Huawei device: Open the app called Gallery
• On a computer: https://cloud.huawei.com/ and click on Gallery

Need any help with your photos?

We offer a help service to get all your photos on-line and in order:

• Scanning/ taking photographs of existing paper photos or scanning of negatives to create digital copies for upload.
• Help you setup your Google Photos with a Google account.
• One-on-One training in working with your photos, creating albums, collages, films, animations and photobooks.
• How to edit your photos and change the date taken so that they appear correctly in your timeline.
• Setting up People and Pets so you can attach a name to a face (e.g.: “Jim”) and have Google do the rest. Google can then put the same name to that face for all your photos. All you then have to do is say “Show all photos of Jim”.