As one of the most popular online photo storage and sharing platforms, Google Photos has a lot to offer. This platform integrated into the Android smartphones and allows users to backup unlimited videos and photos. Google Photos is built with a combination of AI and machine learning which allows it to organize photos on the basis of face detection algorithms. This also allows scanning of the entire collection on the basis of three search parameters; people, things and places. Moreover, the geo-tagging feature also identifies well-known locations so you can also search photos on the basis of location. Now the problem is sometimes you tend to download duplicate photos or videos which definitely occupy more space. So how can you avoid that? Well, here are a few steps that you can follow:
Download:
Before you delete any data, get backup of your account on your computer. Next, follow this procedure:
- Open “Download your Data” Page and select Google Photos option.
- Click on the “Next” button and make relevant sections as per your requirement.
- Set the export type as a one-time archive and select your delivery method.
- In file type, select .zip
- When you click next, the set up will take a few minutes to initiate the process and then you will receive an email with a link to your archived folder. You can open this folder to download the backup folder onto your computer system.
Search
Once this process is completed, you can use the Clones File Checker software to check for duplicates. The process is very simple:
- Go to https://www.clonefileschecker.com/ and install the software onto your system. Add the folder which contains the Google Photos
- Once folders are added, you can also use the “Custom” option to search file types individually.
- After this selection, use the Filters available to customize the scanning process further. It is important to note that you can skip this process if you don’t wish to specify file sizes.
- Next, click “Start Search” and allow the software to scan through the folder.
- Once the results pop up, you can click on “Fix Wizard”. You can either move duplicates to a new folder or delete them permanently.
Delete
Delete all data from the Server. For doing so, carry out following process:
- Simply go to the left menu “Photos” tab of Google Photos and select the first item on screen.
- Scroll down to the last item and press shift to select all data.
- Next, click on delete icon to move all server data to trash. Please note that once moved to trash, the data remains there for a period of 60 days, after which it gets permanently deleted so you can restore it before that, if required.
Now that the Google Photos have been cleaned and old data has been removed, you can upload the cleaned data onto your Google Photos account. For doing so,
- Click on the “Upload” icon from the upper right corner of screen and select “Computer”.
- Next, select all the videos and photos that you wish to upload.
- Please note that you can also drag-n-drop these files onto the platform too. This process will take a few minutes and your work will be done.