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Saturday, December 31, 2016

Getting a New Phone? Wait! Don’t Lose Your Pictures

Get your Mrs. Geek's Guide to Google Photos!
Google Photos is the best way to store your entire library of photos in one place. If you do it right, you will never need to worry about losing your photos.

Before you Give Up Your Old Phone

Notice that I said IF YOU DO IT RIGHT, you will never need to  worry. So, what do I mean by doing it right? There are 2 things you must do before you give up (or wipe out) your old phone.
  1. Make sure your Photos have been backed up to your Google Account. Look at your Google Photos on your old phone. If you see an icon in the lower right corner of any of your thumbnails - either a circular arrow, or a cloud with a slash thru it – that means the photo has not been backed up. You are viewing the picture stored on your device.
    picsondevice
  2. Check the Google Account being used for the Back up & Sync setting. You may have forgotten that you set up your old phone with a Google account that you don’t use any more. To see what Google account is in use,
    1. Open your Google Photos app, tap the 3-line menu in upper left and then Settings
    2. The first item should say, “Back up & Sync: Backing up to myaccount@gmail.com
    3. Make a note of that email address – that is your Google account. You also need to know your password. If you need help with that, visit https://accounts.google.com.
The best way to check both issues at once is to use a computer, go to https://photos.google.com/ and sign in to the account you think stores your photos and see if they’re there! Your account shows in the upper right corner of the photos. If you see your photos then you know they’ve successfully made it to the cloud, AND you know you have the correct Google account username and password. You’re all set to use any device at hand and see all your photos.

Setting up your New Phone

If all the photos from your old phone were successfully backed up, and you know the account that was used, then setting up a new phone is a piece of cake!
  1. Get the Google Photos app from the App store (iOS) or the Play store (Android) and Install it.
  2. Verify that the correct Google account is being used
  3. Open the Google Photos app and see all your pictures!
Note: you will need Internet access, either with Wi-Fi or your cellular data. The pictures are not stored on the phone, they are stored online, so you need access to view them. However, as you view them, Google Photos builds a library of photo thumbnails in cache memory in your phone. After a while, you will be able to view much of your photos even without being connected.

Here is a 6 minute video that demonstrates all of the above.

26 comments:

  1. My old phone is not working so how I can backup photos from that phone in my new phone?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I dont have phone nomore what can i do to get my pics

      Delete
  2. I'm trying to access google cloud photos on a new phone. My old phone backed up hundreds to a cloud somewhere and as far as I can tell those images are lost. I'd rather have no.cloud access

    ReplyDelete
  3. i lost my android phone and i ddnt remember that i sync my or not i lost all my photos from that phone. i do i get them??

    ReplyDelete
  4. How do I get my photos from my old phone

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm kind of like the people with the other comments except I got photos from 2015 say , well I've been through 3 phones since then so they have to be backed up right. I built houses for a living always said when PC's can build a house I'll learn lol

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Trying to get my lost pics from old lost and stolen phones to this newest one

      Delete
    2. Happened to me also now, It is frustating. Now on I dont belive google photos backup.

      Delete
  6. Old phone crashed and burned. Dead retrieved numbers and emails no photos

    ReplyDelete
  7. How can I get the photos from. Lost phone

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  8. Missing photos after I got a new phone the old phone i missing

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  9. Some of my photos are missing after I got to a new phone

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  10. Does anyone know how to download the photos to the new device? I can see the photos in the photos app but I cant use them in other apps like whatsapp and snapchat because they are not actually on my phone. The only way to download them seems to be doing it one by one but it would take way too long since I have like 10k pictures.

    ReplyDelete
  11. How Can i get pictures from my old phone?

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  12. With my new phone I downloaded Google Photos, and 5,000-some photos are missing (I uploaded that many to Google photos yesterday from old phone since I've never really used the app before).
    The photos are there when I view Google Photos on my old phone. There are no icons saying they are not backed up.

    I tried deleting the app data and re-fetching photos, Uninstall / Reinstall Google Photos on the new phone which did not help. I tried factory restart the phone which did not help.

    Now what? As a mom it is very concerning with many family photos on my old phone which are refusing to transfer over the usual way for the technicians. I also have precious photos of my terminal cancer dog on there who we will have to pts any day now.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I need to find my old pictures from 2020 I cannot find them can you help me find them because I got a new phone please help me

    ReplyDelete
  14. I need help all my photos and videos didnt come on the new device. It has a cloud with a line in the middle

    ReplyDelete
  15. some photos do not show but instead there is - storage-emulated...) json
    message instead of the pics.
    so what happened and how do i view the pics>>

    ReplyDelete
  16. I am missing lots of my photos, I have some but not all! Where can they be? I've checked both my accounts

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  17. I've check my account I didn't get my old phone photos and videos.. I want them back please

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  18. Happened to me also.

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  19. How can I get my photos and videos back i did get some but not others

    ReplyDelete