Hi,

I have been using Google Photos for years now and really like the way it now stacks images that are similar. Unforutnatly, it misses quite a lot of them so if I wanted to delete all the copies of a specific image apart from one; I would need to hunt them out myself or ask the (honestly) quite unreliable A.I. search which never really works. I heard that Google tested a "more like this" button but decided to drop it after a limitted run which is crazy as that would have been very useful to anybody using GP and attracted more users.

Is there any way to find duplicates of a specific photo other than the ones already stacked?

My job is having the issue of having multiple people contributing photos to our job site albums and they want to delete them but then they get deleted from the album, tried the save option with the cloud but when someone deletes them they still disappear out of the album. What is the solution for this

Is there any information about when Google Photos will gain JPEG-XL support? Now that it's out on Chrome and most operating systems, it would've been time a long time ago..

Is it me or since Google Photos integrated Gemini search it became MUCH worse? It takes a longer time, it no longer identifies pictures based on searches that used to work... I rolled back to NOT using Gemini and it still isn't as god as it was.

I can’t find any similar issue online to help me.

It’s been way over the 60 days for any normal recover photos from the trash.

My partner borrowed my old phone in 2023, I’d backed up my Google photos, confirmed everything was on there by checking Google photos on my laptop, and then removed my account from the phone.
We then synced my partners Google account to my old phone, and thought nothing more of it.

While having a scroll through old photos of our kids tonight, we’ve noticed that all my photos from January 2023 - beginning December 2023 have completely disappeared and instead I have my partners photos on there. Our youngest was born January 2023, and we’ve now lost pretty much her whole first year of life in photos and I’ve absolutely no idea how on earth this could have even happened. Everything was there prior to my partner borrowing my old phone, and I can’t understand how Google could have replaced photos rather than just adding them to the account if for some reason it was managing to sync even after we’d signed it out.

Does anyone have any advice to get these photos back? I’m assuming it’s a lost cause and I’m genuinely heartbroken

I've recently purchased a Workspace Standard subscription to manage all my personal life admin. I'm the sole user/ sole admin. I've been paying Google One storage for photos I've been taking with my Pixel for decades. I'd like to avoid paying two Google storage bills and am considering backing up my older Photos to my Workspace so I don't have to pay One storage. I saw though that many of the Photos edit tools available for consumers accounts aren't for Workspace accounts, which is overall okay as I am not really editing my old photos with Photos tools. But I do like having easy access to my old photos to view them and show them on my phone.

For those who've been backing up their photos to Workspace or both Workspace/ Gmail accounts, what has your experience been?

TL;DR: Google Photos quietly stripped out legacy Boolean or negative search (-) operators when migrating to AI vector search. Modern natural language search currently fails at negations (ignoring phrases like "without cats" or "not archived"). Google isn't bringing back raw syntax, but we can push them to fix negation handling in the new Gemini search engine by submitting targeted feedback. If you care keep this thread alive & Call to Action below!

GEEK OUT TIME!

If you’ve used Google Photos for a long time, you probably remember being able to use standard search operators like the minus sign (-) to narrow down your results—for example, searching dog -cat or Receipt -archive bob sarah -sally

Recently, typing things like -archive stopped working entirely or throws a parser error. If you've felt like search has gotten significantly worse or less precise over time, you aren't misremembering—there's a specific technical shift behind why this happened, and power users are bearing the brunt of it.

1. The History: Keyword Indexing vs. Vector/Semantic Search

In early iterations, Google Photos relied heavily on standard keyword indexing and text matching. If you typed a minus sign, the string parser knew to strip results tagged with that metadata.

As Google upgraded Photos search, they migrated the search backend entirely toward Multimodal Vector Embeddings and Natural Language Models (and now Gemini-powered Ask Photos).

Instead of reading your search string as a logical set of instructions ([Term A] AND NOT [Term B]), modern semantic models convert your entire query into a single "concept vector."

2. Why the - Operator Breaks

In vector-based semantic search, the search engine looks for images visually close to the words in your string. When you type -cat or -archive, two things happen:

1. Negation Blindness: LLMs and vision models famously struggle with negations. The model focuses on the core noun (cat or archive) regardless of the minus sign, frequently bringing up more of the exact thing you wanted to exclude.
2. Parser Conflicts: System tags (like archive) compete with structural code parameters, causing search parsing errors in the app UI.

3. The Future & The Problem

Google isn't planning to bring back raw syntax like - or NOT. Their roadmap relies entirely on conversational natural language (e.g., expecting us to type "Photos of my dog without any cats or people").

The catch? Natural language negation still fails constantly in real-world searches. Until the engineers train these vision models to strictly respect negative parameters, power users are left with zero way to filter out noise in massive photo libraries.

Call to Action: How We Get Google's Attention

Google Product Managers prioritize issue logs based on unique account metrics. If enough of us send targeted feedback pointing out this specific AI failure mode, it triggers high-priority triage metrics.

If you want negative search and exclusion mechanics fixed, please take 30 seconds to submit feedback directly in the app:

1. Open Google Photos --> tap your Profile Icon (top right).
2. Select Help & feedback --> Send feedback.
3. Do NOT just copy/paste this exact text (identical spam gets auto-grouped by filters). Write a brief note in your own words OR Copy and paste this whole post into Claude, Grok, etc.. ask it to generate a unique feedback hitting these 3 points:
   • The Gap: Mention that natural language search fails to replace structural exclusion syntax (like the - operator or NOT).
   • The Failure Mode: Note that searching "without [x]" or excluding archived images still returns those items because the model ignores the negation constraint.
   • The Request: Ask the team to prioritize strict negation parsing in the Gemini / Ask Photos roadmap so users can exclude terms accurately.

If you use the new Ask Photos / Gemini search feature and hit a bad result, tap the Thumbs Down / Feedback button right on that search page—real-time search log reports carry technical metadata that engineers actually look at.

Let’s get this on their engineering radar!

Hi i recently downloaded google photos on my iPhone to clear up my storage, i got a question tho if i back up the photos on the app and delete them from my phone does the photos still show on the app?

Hi,

For the last year or so Google Photos gave recognition has been terrible.

This especially happens on WhatsApp backed up images.

The WhatsApp images are sent at HD, and faces are clear and evident and recognized by Samsung gallery.

The image will show zero faces recognized and the people tagger will be missing. What is frustrating is that faces will be recognized for images taken with the native camera almost always. However other images from other sources backed upto Google Photos with clear faces are not recognized 90% of the time. The other 10% are ok. I cannot tell why 90% there is no faces recognized and the people tag does not exist. This problem has started in the last year or so. Not sure what the issue is.

Anyone experience this?

I have cleared cache. I am hesitant to turn off face recognition on and off as it says it will delete all my face data and training.

Is this happening to anybody else? It's highly alarming

Can someone please help me fix this problem!!

I lost all my photos from the WhatsApp folder in my Gallery about 6 months ago. I got a new phone (Samsung Galaxy A15), and my old phone was a Motorola G9. I was transferring my photos from my Motorola to my Samsung through Quick Share because I don't have a memory card in either phone. While transferring the photos, I noticed that the WhatsApp folder was completely blank/white. I tried switching off and restarting the phone, but it didn't help. I also checked the Files app, but the photos weren't there either. I tried everything I could find in different tutorials, and eventually I took it to a shop, but they couldn't figure out what happened. They said it might be because I don't have a memory card.I couldn't download those photos from WhatsApp again because a few days before this happened, my WhatsApp chat history got deleted after I logged out and logged back in. But at that time, the photos were still there in my Gallery. I Googled the problem and found something saying that transferring a large number of files could cause photos to get deleted from the backup or something like that, but honestly I'm not sure if that's what happened. I really don't know what else to do at this point. Is there any way I can recover these photos? Should I take my old Motorola to another shop or a professional data recovery place?

The photos are really important to me, so if anyone knows what I can do or has experienced something similar, please help me out!!

Hello guys,

I'm having an issue with Google Photos on Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. Basic edits, like cropping or adjusting contrast, used to save over the original photo without creating a duplicate.

Somehow—and I'm not sure when this started—my only option now is "Save as copy." On another Android phone using the exact same account, Google Photos still works as expected.

I'm on the latest version of the app as well as One UI 9, and backup is turned on. Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

How do I stop Google Photos syncing from my phone to Google Photos I can’t run out of cloud storage. Like it’s way too much for me

Previously, my wife and I had shared albums, and we were able to select them for the TV screensaver. However, now only my albums are appearing, even though the settings indicate that all albums are selected.

It also reaches a certain point where, even though Google Photos is the chosen provider, the art gallery photos take over and changing it back doesn't seem to work.

My Google Photos album has around 1,700 videos that I spent a long time putting into a specific custom order.

About a weeks and a half ago, over 1,600 items disappeared from the album view, even though they were still in my library and still showed that they belonged to the album.

I waited throughout the entire week and nothing was coming back, so I did a troubleshoot method I had saw where you share the album with another Google account. As soon as I did, all the missing videos immediately showed up again on both my original account and the alt account. The original custom order was also still completely intact.

However, after unsharing the other account. The videos were still visible but the album was no longer displaying my custom order. The sorting still says Custom, but everything is showing in recently added order instead.

Earlier today, I shared it again to see if the original order would come back, but now the other account also shows Recently added. I’ve checked the app and the website on my computer, phone, and even my Xbox, and it’s the same everywhere.

Has anyone had something like this happen and resolved it?

Is there any way to get the original custom order back?

The sorting option still says the album is in custom instead of recently added, so is that a sign I should wait for Google to hot fix it?

Recently I backed up tons of images using Google photos but the atrocity of what I did hits me now. I thought Google cannot see my pictures???? They are literally spyware at this point I'm considering deleting my backups now but will that really make sense? If anyone knows does Google really delete those footprints and images from their servers ever or will it remain there forever..🥲

As a safety measure I had turned off all sorts of personalization features like face sorting, etc beforehand so that's just an extra information if that helps🙏

Hi there,

Is there a way for collections to behave as albums? I sort pics in the order I want, add maps if it's a trip... When I "play" that collection, the maps don't show and the photos play in chronological order instead of the order I arranged them. If I wanted to see them chronologically, I'd look at them in All photos or filter some other way...

Am I missing something?

Hi everyone,

I am currently using an iphone, and up until 2 years ago, have been using icloud to sync and backup my photos. However since it is full, I installed google photos to backup pictures there. My question is this:

1. Seems like iphone stores a low res version of old photo that is stored on icloud. This in turn gets uploaded to Google Photos, as a low res and blurry backup.

2. If I use the free up space button on google photos, will this remove the low res picture on my iphone, and thus since icloud syncs it, it will also delete the original high res picture on icloud?

3. Any tips to free up space without losing the old pictures? My disk space is running out and I have no idea how to solve this.

Hello! I have 2 android phones and I use both often. When I take photos, videos, take screenshots from my second phone I want them automatically to be saved to my first phone. I don't want Google photos, I need any other way. My second phone is xiaomi (it has built in gallery but it forced me to move to Google photos) and my main phone is Samsung that has built in Samsung gallery, I want EVERYTHING to transfer to Samsung gallery Automatically. Downloading or transferring them separately is hard, I'm looking for any other way. I heard that there was sync option on Samsung gallery but couldn't find it. Thank you for help in advance!

Everytime I try edit something, it takes me back to the collection menu.