Google Photos (or Photos) is a very powerful and easy-to-use tool for storing and organizing your photos and videos. However, it is important that you are aware of the risks associated with using the Service.
A 10-year journey into Google Images | what are you learning
every year, More than a billion people use the Google Photos app To download and store billions of files. For many, the process is probably identical: You take some photos with your phone and they are automatically uploaded to the Google Cloud. You can choose the best photo and share it on WhatsApp or Instagram and then forget about others. The images join a constantly updated stream of data about one’s life, but digitally.
But let’s be clear: This should not be the case. Uploading thousands of photos and not taking steps to sort or manage them creates a number of privacy risks and makes it impossible to keep your photo collection usable and easily accessible in the future.
It’s time to stop hoarding personal information, you need to realize that Before things get out of hand
Over the past six weeks, I’ve spent twelve hours deleting thousands of photos that have been uploaded to my Google Photos account over the past eight years. In totalI deleted 26,774 photos and 1,200 videos.
During the process (and thousands of clicks on “delete”) three factors emerged:
- Unknowingly includes my photo collection Lots of sensitive personal information (about me and others);
- You don’t need to keep many photos, private duplicate;
- Requires managing my group Huge space in terms of GB;
The bulkiness of your archives – you risk being overwhelmed
My photographic archive goes back to the early 2000s, when everything was shot with the first reflex camera. There are tens of thousands of images – it is impossible to say exactly how many – It is completely managed by Google.
The photos were initially stored on CD and then moved to Flickr before collections were limited to 1,000 photos, finally arriving on Google Photos around 2017.
I still remember when Google accounts limited me to 15 GB of storage, I started paying for more.
Within the collection are family vacation snapshots along with selfies or photos of me with friends. Pictures of food and dogs abound, and let’s face it: What should I do with the Tiramisu 2014 photo?
As phone cameras have improved (like the old samsung s20 or p20pro) and cloud storage has become seemingly endless, it seems like I take more pictures every year, and I’m not the only one.
Think about it for a moment: Google Photos contains an unfathomable amount of files Data about us all: In 2020, the company said it saved 4 trillion, with 28 billion new photos and videos uploaded every week.
Deleting thousands of photos is a manual and tedious process. Using the Galaxy Tab, I scrolled through all the photos I’d backed up in the last 15 years and tapped the ones I wanted to trash. In one of my longest sessions, I deleted 1,600 photos in 45 minutes. Most of the shattered photos were duplicates: instead of having 16 of me running along Giulianova’s waterfront, only the best two or three remained, perhaps the one where I fell on the sand.
Not counting the thousands of deleted screenshots, I’ve literally deleted over 6,000 useless screenshots of things to show friends or “this would come in handy” – spoiler: it never really came in handy –
The storage space is not infinite
Also, from a practical point of view, there is now more space in my Google account. Before you start deleting everything, you have used About 131 GB of storage space; I’m now down to about 45GB.
It is not known to everyone, but Google offers some tools that help in managing photos. You can archive photos if you don’t want to delete them, or keep them in your main photo library.
for example: Photos can be divided into albums (It’s too late for me, I took a month to sign up).
Or consider that storage management tools let you delete photos and files Large videos and get rid of blurry screenshots and photos.
You can also free up some space in your account by reducing the size of your “save quality” photos, Especially for images that don’t interest us much But “they have to stay there.”
In short: a summary of how to organize your photos
- Use organization features: Google Photos offers several options for organizing your photos, such as “Collections” and “Albums”. Use these features to categorize your photos and make it easier to find what you’re looking for.
- Sync only important photosGoogle Photos offers automatic photo syncing, but this can lead to a backlog of useless photos. Manually choose which photos to sync to avoid filling your account with low-quality or junk photos.
- Use labels to make it easy to find: Google Photos uses artificial intelligence to recognize the objects and people in your photos and to provide automatic labels. Use these tags to easily find the images you are looking for.
- Turn on photo backup: Once you are logged into the app, you can turn on the photo backup from the settings. You can choose to sync all photos or just specific folders. Furthermore, it is possible to choose the quality of the images to be uploaded (high quality or space saving).
- Set up two-factor authentication, So you can keep your archive safe in case sensitive data is accidentally saved to your account
Recreating the lives of memories captured with a mobile phone was fun Strong, I recaptured moments from life that I wanted to remember and some that I wanted to forget; But the thing that struck me was the huge amount of screenshots I had on my account.
My honest advice is To immediately begin reorganizing and incorporating a monthly archiving routine, such as “Archive Mondays” where you move your most important memories into folders; Don’t get organized like me!
Google Photos app is pre-installed on all Android devices however It can be downloaded here for PC, Android and iOS.
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