[Solved] Google holds my photos hostage? (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by xtapa@discuss.tchncs.de to c/degoogle@lemmy.ml

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edit: Solved.

The title is a bit theatrical. My google account tells me my storage is full and urges me to buy more storage. The problem is, that on my new phone G Photos just started to put all my photos into the cloud.

How can I remove my photos from the cloud without losing them locally on my phone? I tried logging out of Photos, but then I cannot access my photos. I just requested an archive download via takeout.google.com so I hopefully have a backup, but I still need to get rid of all the photos in the cloud to free up the storage.

I recently started a home server and want to move to selfhosted services, but that will take it's time, so for now, I am forced to continue google services.

Can you help me?

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[-] xtapa@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 3 days ago

First thing, disable all auto backup on your phone. This is step 1 for anything.

I did, but turns out, it either did not save the setting or has more than one place to deactivate. I tried again and after turning backups off, there was an option to delete all backups from the cloud, wich I did after saving the photos to my pc and I got back some space. Thanks for your help.

this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025

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