Another day, another enshittification of a Microsoft product. Nothing new here.
How do I permanently disable random Google Photos popup to backup photos? (2024)
141–150 of 189 posts
Re: How do I permanently disable random Google Photos popup to backup photos? (2024)
#142I recently canceled my Google One subscription. You can cancel any time, but Google WILL make sure you're feeling the withdrawal symptoms fast.
Because without the subscription I had overstretched my storage space, several Google apps went full red-alert-and-howling-klaxons, plastering their UI with warnings about my data's impending doom, should I not solve the storage problem quickly or resume the subscription.
The most obnoxious was Google Photos: It showed a red warning message on 1/3 of the screen space and put a red "no cloud backup" marker on every single thumbnail in the gallery.
All that even though cloud backup was turned OFF. None of those photos was supposed to be backed up anyway.
The app will let you turn off the backup any time, but for unfathomable reasons, it will still get angry if you don't keep enough storage space reserved so you could "hypothetically" turn it back on...
Re: How do I permanently disable random Google Photos popup to backup photos? (2024)
#143We (wife and I) de-googled ourselves about a year and a half ago, moving half a TB of photos to Ente and canceling our paid Google subscription (while still keeping our gmail addresses). We set up our (Android) phones to back up photos to Ente and everything was lovely. Then I started noticing my wife's Google Photos storage use growing again. Somehow her phone had been switched to backing up on Google again. I turne…
I have another, similar example, though not quite as insidious. I switched to GrapheneOS and it's been mostly great. Unfortunately Graphene's stock camera creates drab shots compared to what the hardware supports. OpenCamera is available, but due to OS restrictions it doesn't work with hardware controls. In other words if you want to take a quick shot you have to unlock the phone and select OpenCamera. Bummer if you'…
https://github.com/lukaspieper/Gcam-Services-Provider to choose any gallery while still using pixel camera
Re: How do I permanently disable random Google Photos popup to backup photos? (2024)
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, but it's incredibly convenient? Same way I don't carry a camera because my phone has one
If I leave the house, I need my ID, which is in my wallet, which also contains my debit cards. Perhaps your workflow is different, but I would gain nothing from using a wallet app, so I don't.
I find it a bit dystopian to imagine that everyone has to carry ID all the time. I know lots of countries do it, but I've never had to and I'd like to keep it that way.
(I'm aware that some places I've been to require foreigners to carry passports at all times but luckily it's never been an issue.)
Re: How do I permanently disable random Google Photos popup to backup photos? (2024)
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not the websites. Your browser has that popup.
If I used Chrome, I could see this happening. But it happens on both Edge & Firefox.
I thought you were referring to this: https://underpassapp.com/news/2025/7/5.html
It looks like the pop up is part of the browser UI in Chrome, and displayed as part of the website if using non-Chromium browsers. I block ads and don't use Chrome, so I don't see any version of this often.
Re: How do I permanently disable random Google Photos popup to backup photos? (2024)
#146Worth the shout-out to the open source NetGuard app which allows you to block internet access for select apps without root, using Android's always-on VPN feature as a firewall. This is useful to prevent this and any other apps from talking to the network in a way external to the app itself.
Then you can't use an actual VPN.
Re: How do I permanently disable random Google Photos popup to backup photos? (2024)
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every iPhone and Android device can be cloned in a few minutes with physical access. Misleading: The data can usually be copied quickly and easily is the encrypted version .
There are companies that are specialized in cracking phone logins with unpublished zero-click $370/unit product exploits. An LLM will not help you kid. Also the joke meme: https://xkcd.com/538/ The only indication of a remote-compromised system is apparently a slight drop in battery life, and higher than normal background data. Privacy is dead. =3
> An LLM will not help you kid.
Wow, you've developed such a crazy allergy to seeing a colon that you're becoming one.
I'd say "have fun" with the solipsistic world where everyone who disagrees with you on the internet is a bot, except that in the long term I know you won't.
Re: How do I permanently disable random Google Photos popup to backup photos? (2024)
#148My goal is to move to LineageOS by the end of the month since Google is being such an asshole about "sideloading" (installing) applications. Losing this antifeature will be a nice bonus.
Re: How do I permanently disable random Google Photos popup to backup photos? (2024)
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is worse than that. It fills up your accounts cloud storage, where your Google docs, sheets, drive files etc are stored. Once full you are caught in their trap: pay a monthly fee to the mafia or delete your data! This flow is intentional and they have set up everything to bring you there. The Photo-Backup popup (and arguably the whole photo feature) helps to shovel users more quickly to the end of the monetization…
It’s even worse than that! There is no delete all feature ! So if you have 100k photos and make the mistake of saying yes to Google Photos just once , it will fill up all your storage space, block your email until you pay for extra storage, then force you to delete all your photos manually, one page at a time, before you can stop using it. I think that trap is the sleaziest thing I’ve seen Google do.
Are Google Photos stored in Google Drive? Because Google Collab has access to Google Drive so you can write some nifty Python scripts to move your data between Drive accounts and do mass renames/deletes etc.
Re: How do I permanently disable random Google Photos popup to backup photos? (2024)
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much data do you have ? Isn't B2 expensive at certain size ?
For photos, it's kinda fine? You can store 2TB for $14 per month; to fill that with photos you'd have to shoot 0.5GB/day for 10 years. You can spend less - Google Drive and iCloud will offer 2TB for $10/month - but they don't really want power users who use their whole quota, so they don't make things like command line / API access easy. Likewise Backblaze has an 'unlimited' backup option - but it's desktop mac-and-w…
> You can spend less - Google Drive and iCloud will offer 2TB for $10/month - but they don't really want power users who use their whole quota, so they don't make things like command line / API access easy.
rclone works very, very well with Google Drive: