Tag: Delete

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Apple’s iCloud and Google Photos

A short post to highlight an issue that I wasn’t aware of, and now have to be very wary of. Indeed Ian’s comment about whether you need the Google Photos app installed on your iPhone is prescient – you most probably don’t if you’re backing-up photos to your iCloud account. And if you’re backing-up photos to a google account (as described in the earlier post), there are different ways of doing it which means you quite possibly don’t need the Google Photos app on your phone.

Remember, you can always look at the photos stored in the Google cloud from photos.google.com on your Apple phone or tablet – you don’t need the app installed.

So here goes … another learning point. I’ll type it in capitals so that you don’t miss it!

IF YOU DELETE PHOTOS FROM THE GOOGLE PHOTOS APP ON YOUR IPHONE OR IPAD AND IGNORE THE WARNING – THEY WILL BE DELETED FROM ICLOUD AS WELL.

There, I’ve said it. I didn’t realise it, and always shied away from deleting photos in Google Photos because I didn’t really understand what the warning meant. But now I do and obviously that’s not something I want to do, so how do I go about removing photos from the app, and/or from the Google cloud. Read on!

Scary, eh?! Take care when deleting photos from your iPhone

What I’ve researched is well summarised in the following article …

How to Delete Photos from Google Photos But Not from iCloud

and a couple of posts on the Google Photos support forum …

Does deleting photos in Google Photos also delete them from my iCloud photo Library?

Google Photos deleted my iCloud Photos library

So what do I take from this?

  1. If you want to delete photos from Google Photos – do it on the Google Photos website, not in the app on your iPhone or iPad. If you have synchronisation active, they will then be deleted from the app on your device as well.
  2. If you want to quickly delete all photos from your Google Photos app, just delete the app having first ensured that you’ve switched off Backup and Sync, because if you don’t, when you re-install the app, they will be synchronised back to your iPhone/iPad.
  3. If you don’t need the Google Photos app, uninstall the app, no photos will be deleted from your phone, they will still be in your Camera Roll and will have been stored on iCloud, nothing will be deleted from the Google Photos website either, so you will have to do that deletion from photos.google.com – see Case 1 above.
  4. An unlikely scenario, but one to be aware of – If you turn off iCloud before deleting photos from Google Photos on iPhone, then the photo will be removed from your device and Google Photos. It will stay on iCloud. However, if you enable iCloud again on the same phone, the photo will be removed from it too.
  5. And even more unlikely, but probably unexpected and a potential surprise – Disabling Backup and sync will not have any effect on your iCloud photos as it is just a setting to enable or disable backup service on Google Photos. If you disable it and then delete photos from the Google Photos app on your device, they will be removed from the device as you are technically deleting the device copy on your iPhone/iPad. And once it is deleted, the iCloud copy gets deleted automatically.

Remember. Google Photos in the cloud, and iCloud Photos do NOT work the same way. Apple aims to synchronise all images across all devices with “the master” being held in the cloud. The Google Photos app is just a portal looking into the images on the device, and synchronising (if chosen) those images with ones stored on photos.google.com.

I hope that makes it all perfectly clear 🙂 🙂 🙂

In summary, do not delete photos in Google Photos directly from your iPhone if you have both apps on the device. Use the Google Photos website to remove photos. It is suggested that you should delete a few photos initially. Then, check them in iCloud after some time. If the photos are still there, you can go ahead and delete them in bulk.

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Notes of Hybrid meeting – 10th November 2022

A well-attended meeting with some first in-person attendees – welcome Lynette, Yvonne, Janet, Ossie and Peter, and welcome also to Kate, Sue and Mo who were experiencing Zoom attendance for the first time. Please excuse me if I’ve forgotten a welcome. Admin was never my strongest point.

So, I started off with introductory remarks which were a pretty close repeat of those from the previous meeting, so I won’t repeat them – look here for them.

I quickly looked at the Notes from the previous meeting and mentioned the issues raised by Ian, John Mitchell and Anne which I’d added as Topics – look here for them. I hope to put more of these replies/answers/responses to members issues in Forums from now on. It’s what I created that area to do.

I also encouraged members to download Signal, create an account and then let me know their mobile telno. so that I could add them to our Computer Group on that platform.

We then turned to News and Jonathan and Paul had added some very interesting articles to the Flipboard magazine which I urge you to take a look at. Anyone can add to the magazine, just click on this link to become a Contributor.

Any problems with getting on Signal, or becoming a Flipboard contributor, please let me know.

Two issues that were raised at the last meeting were the process of getting photos from your phone to your computer, and Google settings. The technology let me down whilst trying to demonstrate the former, so I’m written up both topics as blogposts which will appear as soon as possible.

I indicated that Security and Privacy would be an issue I would cover in the next meeting.

So we turned to members’ issues:

Paul advised us that 192.com kept personal detail about us if we used the service (an online equivalent of Yellow Pages) which we might wish to be removed. [I’m not sure this will worry too many of us as you have to create an account and then pay a minimum of £15.99 for 6 searches.] Paul please correct my unerstanding, if I’ve got this wrong. He also told us that TalkTalk were raising their prices again and he now had to pay for UK calls, which he hadn’t had to before. He finally commented on the articles he’s added to Flipboard and suggested we might be interested in the ones on Privacy – storing cookies on phones (Android???); and the ability to track parcels (currently only in the US).

Jonathan told us about the articles he’d added to Flipboard on Windows 10/11 security and cleaning-up a Windows 11 machine which had improved the performance of his laptop remarkably.

Margaret told us that she’d been experiencing a strange failing with her Tiscali email service in that it appeared that it was not being consistently sent. It’s worth noting that Down Detector is a good place to start if you’re having problems with your Internet Services. I haven’t researched the problem in detail, but searching this site may be helpful. [Tiscali is now part of TalkTalk.]

Yvonne reported that her laptop was running slowly – I didn’t write anything else down here, so can’t add anything. Sorry!

Lynette told us that she’d been disturbed by her machine (Windows 10) not being able to be closed down because it was doing clean-ups. This may be related to an upgrade being done by Microsoft [these are done on Tuesdays] which had not been completed. I always advise not to set upgrades to be done automatically. I definitely am not saying, “don’t do upgrades”, but I am saying “do upgrades when you want them to be done”.

John Mitchell bemoaned the fact that he was being pestered with requests to switch to Edge as the default browser. This is of course a nuisance, and I thought that there was an option when the pop-up was shown to request that it not be shown again. [I could be wrong, here!]

Stella was upset that she didn’t seem to be able to transfer recordings that she’s done off her TV on to her PC, as she’d been able to do previously. Paul reminded us that we’d touched on this before and that recordings from TVs are now tied to that TV, and are not transferrable. [I also mentioned with little confidence that she might try formatting her media as FAT-32.]

Jenny enquired whether any member had experience, and could recommend, any sources for refurbished equipment. I expressed the view that I was very sceptical of the value of refurbished equipment unless it was backed-up by some guarantee/warranty , but others remarked that some public bodies regularly released surplus (or redundant) equipment to the public which might be usable. [I’m not convinced.] She also asked whether she should be concerned about a) the amount of memory that apps take up on a phone, and b) how “secure” they are. My reply was – very little, and that they were increasingly more secure because of biometric security and the transition towards FIDO.

Don mentioned something about internet browsers, but again I haven’t written enough down to remind me what it was [Duh!!]

Janet enquired about when items deleted, actually got deleted. Members responded that this was something that could be set in Preferences/Settings, but that you can go into the Trash Can/Bin and delete individual or groups of files at any time. She also enquired about whether she needed to buy internet security software. The group was supportive of my response that Windows Defender is almost certainly adequate for those in our situation.

Renee reported that VirginMedia were really annoying her with the latest “upgrade” they had done to “improve” her broadband. I told her I (as I always do when upgrades are being offered) was waiting for a while before I upgraded [you need to switch the router/hub off and on] She also shared that she’d encountered a situation with photos disappearing from WhatsApp. I advised that this was a feature that was set by the person sending the photos, and applied to messages as well. Signal also had disappearing messages that you could implement.

Anne bemoaned the fact that Windows 11, that she’d been forced to move to having upgraded her Windows 7 laptop, was not intuitive. I offered the opinion that this was a common issue especially as you get older. We want things to stay the same, and just get on with doing the stuff we know how to do. It is for this reason that I hope to do some sessions on the changes to what you can do on your phones, as I’m well out-of-date in my knowledge here!

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Where’s my media?

A short (I hope) note on where media (and text messages) are stored on WhatsApp and Signal, how to backup and restore messages, and how to “get rid” of them – mainly to save space on your phone. I’m going to rely on the links referred to in the post, rather than repeat their contents, so click on the relevant ones.

First, some important points to remember.

  • The primary device for both apps is the device that your phone number was registered with. Any other device that you access messages from the service are synchronised with the primary device (usually a phone). It follows from this that you should always think of both WhatsApp and Signal as mobile apps, not tablet or desktop applications.
  • If you lose your phone, or change your phone without backing it up in the app first, you will lose your message store, and all the media attached to messages. They will not be accessible from your tablet, or desktop, applications because the link for synchronisation will be broken.
  • This is because … NO MESSAGES OR MEDIA ARE STORED ON A SERVER – really, you must believe me!
  • All media that’s downloaded in WhatsApp will be (by default) saved to your Gallery (Android) or Camera Roll [Photos app] (iOS). This is not the case for Signal (see below).

For Android devices, if you want to switch this off, you should read this article. Media files are automatically saved in your WhatsApp/Media/folder. If you have Internal Storage, the WhatsApp folder is located in your Internal Storage. If you do not have internal storage, the folder will be on your SD Card or External SD Card.

For iOS devices, in the same vein, this article may be helpful if you don’t want WhatsApp to store media to your Camera Roll [Photos app].

  • It follows from the above that if you delete media inside WhatsApp and you haven’t changed the default settings, the media should still be in the Gallery, or Camera Roll of your device. [NB I haven’t checked this out because I no longer use WhatsApp.]

If you want to backup your WhatsApp message store, you can refer to this article to find out how to do it for Android and iOS devices, and for PCs (for downloaded media only).

The situation with iOS for Signal is different from that with Android when it comes to Downloading images. Signal does not save media to your Gallery or Camera Roll [Photos app]. If you want to manage the auto download of media to the app, you should read this article first which covers the situation well for Android users, but will need to have a look at this article to see how to switch-off automatic downloads into the app for iOS users. I’m not going to recommend this as a way forward for iOS. Stick to the default and only store the downloaded media in the app.

If you want to Backup or Restore your Signal message store, you are advised to carefully read this article which applies to Android and iOS devices.

Now some notes on deletion of media.

  • It follows from the note above on media saved outside the app that if you delete in the app, the media will still be in the Gallery or Camera Roll. If you delete in the Gallery, the media should still be in the app.
  • Deletion of a message from a Chat will delete the media attached to it, but will not delete the chat, or the media, from any recipients of any message you’ve sent – unless you’ve put an “automatic delete after”setting on the message (Signal only, I believe).
  • Thus, following from above, if a chat recipient replies to a message you’ve deleted, you may see a thumbnail of the media attached to the original message, in the reply.

For iOS users, to delete media from within WhatsApp chats you should read this article. For Android users, this article should help you.

For iOS and Android users, to delete media from within Signal chats you should read this article, save any media you want, select the items for deletion and press the trash icon.

Finally, and I hope you’ve got this far, I think this link summarises the situation really well for our preferred solution – Signal. Media is stored in the app, you have the option manually to save selected images to Gallery or Camera Roll [Photos app], thus saving on storage space and gaining additional security along the way too.

Phew! That’s taken a good deal longer than I expected it would.