Tag: Delete

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Apple’s iCloud and Google Photos

A short post to highlight an issue that I wasn’t aware of, and now have to be very wary of. Indeed Ian’s comment about whether you need the Google Photos app installed on your iPhone is prescient – you most probably don’t if you’re backing-up photos to your iCloud account. And if you’re backing-up photos to a google account (as described in the earlier post), there are different ways of doing it which means you quite possibly don’t need the Google Photos app on your phone.

Remember, you can always look at the photos stored in the Google cloud from photos.google.com on your Apple phone or tablet – you don’t need the app installed.

So here goes … another learning point. I’ll type it in capitals so that you don’t miss it!

IF YOU DELETE PHOTOS FROM THE GOOGLE PHOTOS APP ON YOUR IPHONE OR IPAD AND IGNORE THE WARNING – THEY WILL BE DELETED FROM ICLOUD AS WELL.

There, I’ve said it. I didn’t realise it, and always shied away from deleting photos in Google Photos because I didn’t really understand what the warning meant. But now I do and obviously that’s not something I want to do, so how do I go about removing photos from the app, and/or from the Google cloud. Read on!

Scary, eh?! Take care when deleting photos from your iPhone

What I’ve researched is well summarised in the following article …

How to Delete Photos from Google Photos But Not from iCloud

and a couple of posts on the Google Photos support forum …

Does deleting photos in Google Photos also delete them from my iCloud photo Library?

Google Photos deleted my iCloud Photos library

So what do I take from this?

  1. If you want to delete photos from Google Photos – do it on the Google Photos website, not in the app on your iPhone or iPad. If you have synchronisation active, they will then be deleted from the app on your device as well.
  2. If you want to quickly delete all photos from your Google Photos app, just delete the app having first ensured that you’ve switched off Backup and Sync, because if you don’t, when you re-install the app, they will be synchronised back to your iPhone/iPad.
  3. If you don’t need the Google Photos app, uninstall the app, no photos will be deleted from your phone, they will still be in your Camera Roll and will have been stored on iCloud, nothing will be deleted from the Google Photos website either, so you will have to do that deletion from photos.google.com – see Case 1 above.
  4. An unlikely scenario, but one to be aware of – If you turn off iCloud before deleting photos from Google Photos on iPhone, then the photo will be removed from your device and Google Photos. It will stay on iCloud. However, if you enable iCloud again on the same phone, the photo will be removed from it too.
  5. And even more unlikely, but probably unexpected and a potential surprise – Disabling Backup and sync will not have any effect on your iCloud photos as it is just a setting to enable or disable backup service on Google Photos. If you disable it and then delete photos from the Google Photos app on your device, they will be removed from the device as you are technically deleting the device copy on your iPhone/iPad. And once it is deleted, the iCloud copy gets deleted automatically.

Remember. Google Photos in the cloud, and iCloud Photos do NOT work the same way. Apple aims to synchronise all images across all devices with “the master” being held in the cloud. The Google Photos app is just a portal looking into the images on the device, and synchronising (if chosen) those images with ones stored on photos.google.com.

I hope that makes it all perfectly clear 🙂 🙂 🙂

In summary, do not delete photos in Google Photos directly from your iPhone if you have both apps on the device. Use the Google Photos website to remove photos. It is suggested that you should delete a few photos initially. Then, check them in iCloud after some time. If the photos are still there, you can go ahead and delete them in bulk.

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Where’s my media?

A short (I hope) note on where media (and text messages) are stored on WhatsApp and Signal, how to backup and restore messages, and how to “get rid” of them – mainly to save space on your phone. I’m going to rely on the links referred to in the post, rather than repeat their contents, so click on the relevant ones.

First, some important points to remember.

  • The primary device for both apps is the device that your phone number was registered with. Any other device that you access messages from the service are synchronised with the primary device (usually a phone). It follows from this that you should always think of both WhatsApp and Signal as mobile apps, not tablet or desktop applications.
  • If you lose your phone, or change your phone without backing it up in the app first, you will lose your message store, and all the media attached to messages. They will not be accessible from your tablet, or desktop, applications because the link for synchronisation will be broken.
  • This is because … NO MESSAGES OR MEDIA ARE STORED ON A SERVER – really, you must believe me!
  • All media that’s downloaded in WhatsApp will be (by default) saved to your Gallery (Android) or Camera Roll [Photos app] (iOS). This is not the case for Signal (see below).

For Android devices, if you want to switch this off, you should read this article. Media files are automatically saved in your WhatsApp/Media/folder. If you have Internal Storage, the WhatsApp folder is located in your Internal Storage. If you do not have internal storage, the folder will be on your SD Card or External SD Card.

For iOS devices, in the same vein, this article may be helpful if you don’t want WhatsApp to store media to your Camera Roll [Photos app].

  • It follows from the above that if you delete media inside WhatsApp and you haven’t changed the default settings, the media should still be in the Gallery, or Camera Roll of your device. [NB I haven’t checked this out because I no longer use WhatsApp.]

If you want to backup your WhatsApp message store, you can refer to this article to find out how to do it for Android and iOS devices, and for PCs (for downloaded media only).

The situation with iOS for Signal is different from that with Android when it comes to Downloading images. Signal does not save media to your Gallery or Camera Roll [Photos app]. If you want to manage the auto download of media to the app, you should read this article first which covers the situation well for Android users, but will need to have a look at this article to see how to switch-off automatic downloads into the app for iOS users. I’m not going to recommend this as a way forward for iOS. Stick to the default and only store the downloaded media in the app.

If you want to Backup or Restore your Signal message store, you are advised to carefully read this article which applies to Android and iOS devices.

Now some notes on deletion of media.

  • It follows from the note above on media saved outside the app that if you delete in the app, the media will still be in the Gallery or Camera Roll. If you delete in the Gallery, the media should still be in the app.
  • Deletion of a message from a Chat will delete the media attached to it, but will not delete the chat, or the media, from any recipients of any message you’ve sent – unless you’ve put an “automatic delete after”setting on the message (Signal only, I believe).
  • Thus, following from above, if a chat recipient replies to a message you’ve deleted, you may see a thumbnail of the media attached to the original message, in the reply.

For iOS users, to delete media from within WhatsApp chats you should read this article. For Android users, this article should help you.

For iOS and Android users, to delete media from within Signal chats you should read this article, save any media you want, select the items for deletion and press the trash icon.

Finally, and I hope you’ve got this far, I think this link summarises the situation really well for our preferred solution – Signal. Media is stored in the app, you have the option manually to save selected images to Gallery or Camera Roll [Photos app], thus saving on storage space and gaining additional security along the way too.

Phew! That’s taken a good deal longer than I expected it would.