Android Photo Management/Backup
December 26, 2018 11:27 AM Subscribe
Please help an iOS user get an Android-using relative's phone in tip-top shape for photo backup/management.
I told my sister-in-law that I would help her make sure her photos are backed up, particularly so that she isn't worried about running out of space or losing pictures of her new nephew. I'm an iOS user and know next to nothing about Android besides applying the xkcd tech support flowchart.
She has a Galaxy J7 Star, running Android 8.0.0 and "Samsung Experience" version 9.0. I believe it's a 32 GB phone.
She was already using Google Photos in part, but only for photos she uploaded on an elective basis, not for automatic backups. My first step was to turn on "Back up & sync" in settings in Google Photos. I selected backup from all listed "Device folders" (two folders called Camera, two folders called Download, and a folder called Facebook).
Her initial upload is running in the background as I look at other steps to take. That upload seems to be taking pictures from the "Gallery" app, where she tells me new photos she takes herself go, and uploading them to Google photos. That's good.
Other things I'd like to accomplish/address:
* Prevent her from getting errors that she is running out of space to store photos. She is very nervous about this based on experience with prior phones, and it makes her stop taking pictures at events if she thinks she's taking too many, because she thinks she may hit a limit. My understanding is that what I want to do to address this is the combination of Google Photos backups described above, plus selecting "Free up device storage" in Google Photos settings, which purports to "remove original photos & videos from your device that are already backed up". She still has 12 GB available so hopefully this won't be an issue soon, but she wants to make sure it won't. Is there anything else I should be thinking about? Will selecting "Free up device storage" in Google Photos settings delete the photos from the "Gallery" app?
* She has a workflow of sorts where my wife sends her pictures of our baby and every week or so she goes back through their text conversation and "shares" the photos one by one to Google Photos. Is there any way to set it up so that all pictures from her text conversations automatically save to and show up in Google Photos without any additional steps by her? It seems like that would save a lot of time and anxiety about accidentally losing photos she's been sent by text. (I imagine that once the Google Photos backup is automatically going, any photos she saved from her text conversations locally to downloads on her phone will also be sent to Google Photos, but ideally we would avoid that step and have all photos she is sent go automatically to Google Photos).
* I'm not sure what her Facebook photo upload workflow looks like, but once all her photos are on Google Photos and being deleted from her "Gallery" app to free up space (per the above), will anything need to change about where she goes to upload photos (now from Google Photos) to Facebook?
* She's concerned about managing duplicate photos. If she ends up with ten copies of the same picture, is there something we can do on Google Photos to remove duplicates? She doesn't want do this if it "makes mistakes" and might delete photos she only had one of. I told her what we're doing is much safer that just having photos locally on her phone, that I couldn't promise nothing would ever go wrong, but that I didn't think that would be an issue.
* She has broadband at home and a wireless router but as far as I can tell she never uses her home internet connection unless we or other relatives are staying over at her house. She does all of her computing on her phone and I believe on her cell connection. For the big initial upload to Google Photos, I've made sure to connect her phone to her network while it does the upload. Going forward, though, I've turned "Cellular data back up" for Photos on, because past experience has taught us that she may not notice if the router gets turned off or something else happens to her home wifi, because she doesn't really use it. For that reason I'm worried about her backups stopping running and her not realizing it, unless we run them over cell service. Not really a question there, but if anyone has any additional thoughts about how to mitigate that issue I would be grateful for them.
I think that's all but if I think of something else I was trying to do I'll come back. And if there's another aspect of good photo backup hygiene that I'm missing, please let me know! Thanks to all Android experts!
I told my sister-in-law that I would help her make sure her photos are backed up, particularly so that she isn't worried about running out of space or losing pictures of her new nephew. I'm an iOS user and know next to nothing about Android besides applying the xkcd tech support flowchart.
She has a Galaxy J7 Star, running Android 8.0.0 and "Samsung Experience" version 9.0. I believe it's a 32 GB phone.
She was already using Google Photos in part, but only for photos she uploaded on an elective basis, not for automatic backups. My first step was to turn on "Back up & sync" in settings in Google Photos. I selected backup from all listed "Device folders" (two folders called Camera, two folders called Download, and a folder called Facebook).
Her initial upload is running in the background as I look at other steps to take. That upload seems to be taking pictures from the "Gallery" app, where she tells me new photos she takes herself go, and uploading them to Google photos. That's good.
Other things I'd like to accomplish/address:
* Prevent her from getting errors that she is running out of space to store photos. She is very nervous about this based on experience with prior phones, and it makes her stop taking pictures at events if she thinks she's taking too many, because she thinks she may hit a limit. My understanding is that what I want to do to address this is the combination of Google Photos backups described above, plus selecting "Free up device storage" in Google Photos settings, which purports to "remove original photos & videos from your device that are already backed up". She still has 12 GB available so hopefully this won't be an issue soon, but she wants to make sure it won't. Is there anything else I should be thinking about? Will selecting "Free up device storage" in Google Photos settings delete the photos from the "Gallery" app?
* She has a workflow of sorts where my wife sends her pictures of our baby and every week or so she goes back through their text conversation and "shares" the photos one by one to Google Photos. Is there any way to set it up so that all pictures from her text conversations automatically save to and show up in Google Photos without any additional steps by her? It seems like that would save a lot of time and anxiety about accidentally losing photos she's been sent by text. (I imagine that once the Google Photos backup is automatically going, any photos she saved from her text conversations locally to downloads on her phone will also be sent to Google Photos, but ideally we would avoid that step and have all photos she is sent go automatically to Google Photos).
* I'm not sure what her Facebook photo upload workflow looks like, but once all her photos are on Google Photos and being deleted from her "Gallery" app to free up space (per the above), will anything need to change about where she goes to upload photos (now from Google Photos) to Facebook?
* She's concerned about managing duplicate photos. If she ends up with ten copies of the same picture, is there something we can do on Google Photos to remove duplicates? She doesn't want do this if it "makes mistakes" and might delete photos she only had one of. I told her what we're doing is much safer that just having photos locally on her phone, that I couldn't promise nothing would ever go wrong, but that I didn't think that would be an issue.
* She has broadband at home and a wireless router but as far as I can tell she never uses her home internet connection unless we or other relatives are staying over at her house. She does all of her computing on her phone and I believe on her cell connection. For the big initial upload to Google Photos, I've made sure to connect her phone to her network while it does the upload. Going forward, though, I've turned "Cellular data back up" for Photos on, because past experience has taught us that she may not notice if the router gets turned off or something else happens to her home wifi, because she doesn't really use it. For that reason I'm worried about her backups stopping running and her not realizing it, unless we run them over cell service. Not really a question there, but if anyone has any additional thoughts about how to mitigate that issue I would be grateful for them.
I think that's all but if I think of something else I was trying to do I'll come back. And if there's another aspect of good photo backup hygiene that I'm missing, please let me know! Thanks to all Android experts!
Oh, and it looks like the Galaxy J7 Star can take an SD card. They are incredibly cheap these days. If she's really terrified about space, drop $30 and add another 128gb.
posted by dobbs at 2:30 PM on December 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by dobbs at 2:30 PM on December 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
dobbs is correct about everything except the first paragraph. If you save your pictures in whatever resolution you take them then it counts against your total Google account storage. If you let Google compress your photos for backup then you have no limit on how much you can upload.
posted by irisclara at 7:27 PM on December 26, 2018
posted by irisclara at 7:27 PM on December 26, 2018
Thinking specifically about automatically downloading the images from SMS messages...
The closest I can find to automatic is this app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobappli.savemms
or search "Save MMS pictures."
I've no personal experience with it, but it seems it can be used to automatically download photos into a folder that Google Photos can then back up.
posted by contemplativenapper at 8:33 PM on December 26, 2018
The closest I can find to automatic is this app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mobappli.savemms
or search "Save MMS pictures."
I've no personal experience with it, but it seems it can be used to automatically download photos into a folder that Google Photos can then back up.
posted by contemplativenapper at 8:33 PM on December 26, 2018
Google Files will provide suggestions about things you can delete to free up space. IIRC, it hooks to Photos and will only suggest you delete photos that are backed up. The nice thing is that it will also flag old downloads and such for possible deletion as well.
If she's worried about her data limit, you can turn off automatic backups over cellular data for photos and videos separately. If you flip those settings off while leaving the backup enabled, it will only back up over WiFi. The nice thing is that it won't suggest any photos be deleted from the device until it has actually backed them up, so unless she's manually removing pictures, she shouldn't ever lose anything when responding positively to the prompt about deleting on device photos that have been backed up.
posted by wierdo at 3:14 PM on December 27, 2018
If she's worried about her data limit, you can turn off automatic backups over cellular data for photos and videos separately. If you flip those settings off while leaving the backup enabled, it will only back up over WiFi. The nice thing is that it won't suggest any photos be deleted from the device until it has actually backed them up, so unless she's manually removing pictures, she shouldn't ever lose anything when responding positively to the prompt about deleting on device photos that have been backed up.
posted by wierdo at 3:14 PM on December 27, 2018
Oh, and if she cares about her media enough to pay, the jump from 15/17GB to 100GB is $2/mo or $20 a year. (They say the free tier is 15GB, but I've got 17 for some reason..I've only managed to use up 10GB in the past 7 years)
They also often have offers on Chromebooks, chromecasts, and other Google devices that include a year or two of extra storage with your purchase in case she happens to want one anyway. I wouldn't buy one just for the extra space, but I'd certainly change the timing of an already planned purchase to get it. ;)
posted by wierdo at 3:22 PM on December 27, 2018
They also often have offers on Chromebooks, chromecasts, and other Google devices that include a year or two of extra storage with your purchase in case she happens to want one anyway. I wouldn't buy one just for the extra space, but I'd certainly change the timing of an already planned purchase to get it. ;)
posted by wierdo at 3:22 PM on December 27, 2018
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You may have to turn on the backup feature in the settings. In the gallery settings you might also want to turn off Data Roaming backup so she doesn't get overages when travelling.
Then, all photos will instantly be backed up to photos.google.com where they can be searched for via keyword that you DO NOT have to assign. For instance, you can type Dog or Cat or Girls etc to see such pictures. I believe that once you tag a photo with a name, it'll be pretty good at finding that person among all photos. For instance, I tagged myself once and now can type "Me" in the search field to see all selfies. I also once made a gallery there for my dog, Shakedown, and now I can type her name and it'll show me all photos of my dog in particular without me having to tag them or put them in the gallery.
Once photos are on the web gallery, they stay their forever (assuming they're high res) unless you delete them. If you delete them from the web gallery and the phone they're obviously gone for good.
When prompted with the "free up space" notification, clicking 'ok' causes those photos to be removed from the phone but they stay in the web gallery. If you want to get the image back on your phone, find it in the gallery and choose "download to phone".
I could be wrong but also believe that once a pic is favorited (click the star), Google will not automatically delete it from the phone when freeing up space.
Anytime a new app creates a new gallery (for instance, Instagram makes its own gallery, VSCO, Fotor, etc.), Google will say "I found a new photo gallery for X. Should I back it up?" and you can click yes assuming you want those photos backed up. This will also happen with any photos she's sent -- for instance, "I found a new gallery called Whatsapp. Should I back it up?" It'll only ask you this the first time a photo is received in the app and viewed in the Gallery (just done by opening the photo).
I do not believe that she has to "share" the photos to the gallery. I believe she just has to make Google Photos her default photo viewing app and then, each time she opens the photo for the first time, it does that in that app and flags it for backup.
As for the "10 copies" problem... my experience is that all 10 will be on the web gallery but -- suppose the picture is of your baby -- when she searches "baby" it will just show you what it considers the best photo. To the right of that photo will be a Down Arrow and if you click it, you'll see the others. This is also what happens when you punch a date into the search box. For instance, I take several hundred pictures a day, but if I punch in a date, it'll just show me the "top" pictures -- meaning the best or my most viewed. If I click the down arrow it'll show me every picture from that day.
Not really a question there, but if anyone has any additional thoughts about how to mitigate that issue I would be grateful for them.
Is she on a capped data plan? If it's unlimited, nothing to worry about. If it's capped or charges for overages, go into the phone's settings and turn on a data warning (search settings for mobile data). If she is limited to 5gB then set it for 3.5 or something like that just so she knows ahead of time. I believe the setting is called Data Saver. Look at her phone bill to find the start of her monthly billing cycle and punch it in so it knows when to reset to 0 and start counting again.
posted by dobbs at 2:26 PM on December 26, 2018