If you don’t remember how to do this, check the previous section, except at Step 6, select Allow. Once you’ve finished freeing up space, you can return to your phone and re-allow Photos to access your local storage. Here’s a tip: You can use Shift while selecting photos to pick out many at once.ĥ. You’re now in the Photos app and can go ham deleting whatever you please. This means you’ll need another device to log into your Google account, allowing you to delete the photos while blocking the search-engine giant’s permission privileges.Ĥ. They’re not actually saved to the app itself, even on Google phones. After all, Google Photos merely acts as a way to display your photos in a neat and tidy manner. The key to protecting your phone’s local storage is to stop Google Photos’ ability to modify your local files.

How to prevent Google Photos from deleting locally stored photos

I refused to lose to a predatory scheme to enlist me in a subscription service, so I got to work and found a way to destroy those cloud photos without losing anything on my local storage. Nearly losing my photos wasn’t worth my stubborn hatred of Google, but I decided it wasn’t worth it. Part of me was ready to just start paying for it. Either I deal with having no space on my Drive forever, or I cough up cash every month to my one and only overlord, Google.

I was still stuck with no storage space and an inability to delete photos from the Cloud without them disappearing permanently. But that’s not where my frustration ends. But if I hadn’t checked sooner, so much would have been gone forever because of an incredibly silly system that makes it difficult to delete photos from the cloud without impacting local storage.

Thankfully, I was able to go into Trash and fish those photos out before they were permanently lost.

My google cloud pics