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[-] Redkey@programming.dev 68 points 1 day ago

The most insidious part of OneDrive and Google's equivalent (Photos, etc.) on Android is that they both treat the cloud copy as the "original" and the local copy as temporary. That is, in normal usage, if you delete the local copy it remains in the cloud, but if you delete the cloud copy it also deletes the local copy automatically. Under both systems, if you want to delete something from the cloud but keep the local copy, you have to go through a separate, clunky web interface.

[-] tynansdtm@lemmy.ml 37 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Just spent two evenings with a friend of my mom who was losing her mind because Google was threatening to cut off her emails if she didn't clear out pay for more storage space. Obviously her phone was uploading all her pictures so every time she cleared some space Google happily filled it back up for her automatically. Fortunately her frantic deletions were within the last 30 days so takeout recovered 36GB of dead husband pictures from a 15GB cloud. But let me tell you, clearing out Google Photos was tedious, there is no Select All button in the web interface because leaving their service is not something they want you to do.

If you ever have to do something like this again, rclone supports mounting Google Drive, at which point you'll be able to work with it as if it's a proper filesystem.

https://rclone.org/drive/

[-] tynansdtm@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago

Unfortunately, despite sharing the same pool of storage, Google Drive and Google Photos are different cloud services and you can't see photos from one on the other. And rclone's access to Photos is completely hamstrung. (Looks like I referred to it by both names in my last post, sorry for the confusion.)

[-] TwilightKiddy@scribe.disroot.org 1 points 12 hours ago

God I'm glad I'm not using anything Google...

[-] Cyber@feddit.uk 3 points 1 day ago

Wow, I didn't know that.

I can see I'm going to have to do something similar in the future, so my future self thanks you

[-] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

photos on google photos might only be accessible with the appropriate rclone backend: https://rclone.org/googlephotos/

it has a few limitations, like google stores metadata (exif data) separately, so downloaded photos don't have them, there is another tool that puzzles it together automatically.
but now that I read it, for more than a year now rclone is only allowed to download what it uploaded? what bullshit is that, google?

[-] marcos@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

you have to go through a separate, clunky web interface

Yes, you get a Linux machine, and use the web interface there. It's less clunky than the one you get on Android, and way more reliable than whatever you do on Windows that would end-up with you uploading the files a second time.

[-] mangobanana@discuss.online 3 points 1 day ago

This make me so irate too if I'm deleting crap off my cloud (for more storage room) don't fucking delete it off my phone too. They changed this about 4 or 5 years ago I have to change all my photos locations in my phone storage to make sure they don't delete my pictures

this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2026
449 points (98.9% liked)

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