Omg Google, WTF???
Dec. 7th, 2024 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shivverRant, if you couldn't tell.
Last night, I was working on a fic, which means on my iPad in Google Docs, which is where I usually store my fics. No problem, except, well, I'm not really sure I like how this fic turned out. But anyway. I had to go off and do something for an hour, and then I headed to bed to work on the fic more. I pull out the iPad, open the doc, and there's a red bar at the top that says that I've lost access to the document, and provides a link to managing my Google account.
Lost access? To a document that I created on this iPad with this Google account? How did that happen, especially sometime in the last hour?
I'm not prone to scream "Hacker!" so I started checking everything I could. Am I still logged into the right account? Yes. How are my other documents? The next three I opened displayed the same notification.
Okay, what about that "manage account" link? I tap it, and it opens a page saying that I need to verify my account, and it displays the Google account for my old job. What? I purged that from this iPad at the beginning of October. Could it think that I'm logged into that? I checked the Google apps and they have no knowledge of that account.
However, Google Drive displayed a different notification: my Google cloud storage is full, and editing documents has been disabled until there's space in the storage. Okay, that makes sense, sorta. Google has a free storage limit of 15 GB, and I've only used about 5 GB - I only use it to store documents and photos that my Android phone has taken, which isn't many. I rely on my Canon camera for photos, and those are put on my iPad and never go to Google's cloud. But, it does make sense that if the storage is full, they'd disable document editing.
Note to Google: "Losing access to this document" is not the same thing as "Editing has been disabled."
So, why is my storage full? What is this extra 10 GB that wasn't there when I checked this about a month ago? My Google Drive hasn't had major changes, so I check Google Photos, and... there are tons of screenshots from my iPad there that shouldn't be.
I've been an iOS user with an Android phone for ten years now. The iPad has been happily keeping my screenshots and my holiday photos private (I have had iCloud turned off ever since I found my photos of DT, which I'd never posted anywhere, being posted by other people in a Facebook group), and my Android phone has been storing its pictures in Google Photos. Though I have the Google Photos app on my iPad and use it frequently to transfer images of sheet music into ForScore, it has never tried to put the phone pictures on the iPad or try to upload the iPad images to Google Photos.
Except apparently it decided to start doing the second last night.
And there's the problem. Just the pictures from my Europe trip this year is 14 GB; the photos and screenshots from the last ten years is probably blowing the 15 GB storage limit by 5x.
I did a bit of research and the interwebs says you can stop this by turning off Google Photo's backup for the device. So I did that and started deleting some of the iPad screenshots from Google Photos... and that deleted them from iPad! (Yes, I did lose some irreplaceable images, but they weren't that important. Luckily I only did a few before checking.)
A bit more research later, I found that yes, turning off Google Photo's backup for the device will prevent the device's images from being uploaded to Google Photo, but once the image is in Google Photos, deleting it from Google Photos will delete it on ALL devices.
Really, Google? You think that if a user deletes a photo in your service - a service that's supposed to a data backup - they want you to delete it everywhere?
Upshot of this is that right now, I can't work on writing. The Google storage is full, preventing me from editing my Google docs, and if I remove any images from Google Photos to make room, it just uploads more from my iPad until the storage is full again. I could disable the backup for the device or turn off wifi, but that's just a temporary solution.
What I'm going to have to do is 1) download all of the images from my iPad (already done actually), 2) back them up (we have a RAID for this, which is why I don't use iCloud or Google Photos for real backups), 3) remove all of the iPad images from Google Photos (which will remove them from the iPad), 4) disable Google Photo's backup on the iPad, and 5) put all of the images back on my iPad (well, without the screenshots; don't really need them).
I'm exhausted just thinking about this.
But my main thought is, Why?? Why did this service suddenly decide to forcibly upload all of the images on this device? I've always had to hand-select images to upload to Google photos, for the past decade+ that I've used iOS, so why now?
Sigh.
Last night, I was working on a fic, which means on my iPad in Google Docs, which is where I usually store my fics. No problem, except, well, I'm not really sure I like how this fic turned out. But anyway. I had to go off and do something for an hour, and then I headed to bed to work on the fic more. I pull out the iPad, open the doc, and there's a red bar at the top that says that I've lost access to the document, and provides a link to managing my Google account.
Lost access? To a document that I created on this iPad with this Google account? How did that happen, especially sometime in the last hour?
I'm not prone to scream "Hacker!" so I started checking everything I could. Am I still logged into the right account? Yes. How are my other documents? The next three I opened displayed the same notification.
Okay, what about that "manage account" link? I tap it, and it opens a page saying that I need to verify my account, and it displays the Google account for my old job. What? I purged that from this iPad at the beginning of October. Could it think that I'm logged into that? I checked the Google apps and they have no knowledge of that account.
However, Google Drive displayed a different notification: my Google cloud storage is full, and editing documents has been disabled until there's space in the storage. Okay, that makes sense, sorta. Google has a free storage limit of 15 GB, and I've only used about 5 GB - I only use it to store documents and photos that my Android phone has taken, which isn't many. I rely on my Canon camera for photos, and those are put on my iPad and never go to Google's cloud. But, it does make sense that if the storage is full, they'd disable document editing.
Note to Google: "Losing access to this document" is not the same thing as "Editing has been disabled."
So, why is my storage full? What is this extra 10 GB that wasn't there when I checked this about a month ago? My Google Drive hasn't had major changes, so I check Google Photos, and... there are tons of screenshots from my iPad there that shouldn't be.
I've been an iOS user with an Android phone for ten years now. The iPad has been happily keeping my screenshots and my holiday photos private (I have had iCloud turned off ever since I found my photos of DT, which I'd never posted anywhere, being posted by other people in a Facebook group), and my Android phone has been storing its pictures in Google Photos. Though I have the Google Photos app on my iPad and use it frequently to transfer images of sheet music into ForScore, it has never tried to put the phone pictures on the iPad or try to upload the iPad images to Google Photos.
Except apparently it decided to start doing the second last night.
And there's the problem. Just the pictures from my Europe trip this year is 14 GB; the photos and screenshots from the last ten years is probably blowing the 15 GB storage limit by 5x.
I did a bit of research and the interwebs says you can stop this by turning off Google Photo's backup for the device. So I did that and started deleting some of the iPad screenshots from Google Photos... and that deleted them from iPad! (Yes, I did lose some irreplaceable images, but they weren't that important. Luckily I only did a few before checking.)
A bit more research later, I found that yes, turning off Google Photo's backup for the device will prevent the device's images from being uploaded to Google Photo, but once the image is in Google Photos, deleting it from Google Photos will delete it on ALL devices.
Really, Google? You think that if a user deletes a photo in your service - a service that's supposed to a data backup - they want you to delete it everywhere?
Upshot of this is that right now, I can't work on writing. The Google storage is full, preventing me from editing my Google docs, and if I remove any images from Google Photos to make room, it just uploads more from my iPad until the storage is full again. I could disable the backup for the device or turn off wifi, but that's just a temporary solution.
What I'm going to have to do is 1) download all of the images from my iPad (already done actually), 2) back them up (we have a RAID for this, which is why I don't use iCloud or Google Photos for real backups), 3) remove all of the iPad images from Google Photos (which will remove them from the iPad), 4) disable Google Photo's backup on the iPad, and 5) put all of the images back on my iPad (well, without the screenshots; don't really need them).
I'm exhausted just thinking about this.
But my main thought is, Why?? Why did this service suddenly decide to forcibly upload all of the images on this device? I've always had to hand-select images to upload to Google photos, for the past decade+ that I've used iOS, so why now?
Sigh.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-08 06:11 am (UTC)There are couple of ways to handle it.
The first thing to do is to remove all permissions from your app. You will have to go into app info and delete
all its data. This should clear all the permissions and settings. It will complain bitterly when you do this, but it won't effect your device photo storage, just the app data storage.
I still let google back up all my pics, but I revoked its permission to access my device. If I try to delete a pic from photos it asks for permission to access my device and when I tell it no, it cancels the deletion. Be sure and test this with a pic you don't care about or have copied to another storage device.
SO -
In order to delete pics from your account, easiest way is to log on with a computer and mass delete from there. If you have revoked all permissions AND your backups, that's it, you are done.
If you still want to back up some pics you have to do more work.
Any folders you let google back up will re-upload any pic you have deleted. So you will either have to go into your screenshots or DCIM folder and delete pics you don't want on your device anymore, or move them to another folder google can't access. I made one called "older pics" and I move things there that google can't touch.
It's a big pain in the neck, but it is doable once you get used to digging into your device storage.
no subject
Date: 2024-12-08 10:42 pm (UTC)I'm also seriously considering removing Google Photos from my iPad, because I only use it for one thing, which is transferring photos of sheet music there to import into ForScore. It's easy to do via Google Photos, but it's only one extra step to download them to my computer and then transfer them to the iPad via a cable. But that will stop this nonsense once and for all. :P