Review Insights · App Store
Google Photos: Backup & Edit
Google · 1,392,843 ratings · ★ 4.8
4.8
★★★★★
1,392,843 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 25 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"photos"
13 negative reviews mention this · 52% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Held Hostage - can’t undo backup - forced storage purchase. After accidentally keeping the sync/backup this device checked when first loading this app on my iPhone, unable to remove all photos from the Google cloud using an undo backup. This has compromised access to my Gmail account since it’s a sh…" - SLC-reviews
2
"google"
11 negative reviews mention this · 44% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Held Hostage - can’t undo backup - forced storage purchase. After accidentally keeping the sync/backup this device checked when first loading this app on my iPhone, unable to remove all photos from the Google cloud using an undo backup. This has compromised access to my Gmail account since it’s a sh…" - SLC-reviews
3
"access"
10 negative reviews mention this · 40% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Held Hostage - can’t undo backup - forced storage purchase. After accidentally keeping the sync/backup this device checked when first loading this app on my iPhone, unable to remove all photos from the Google cloud using an undo backup. This has compromised access to my Gmail account since it’s a sh…" - SLC-reviews
4
"been"
6 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Duplicates issue. Very annoying issue - certain pictures have duplicates and it's very annoying to figure out which one is the real one on device and which is just backed up, and I have to manually delete them all. Please fix it's been happening for years." - Devalshah9
5
"full"
6 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Privacy concern. It refuses to work until i give it full access even though i gave it limited access to photos" - Turkikhld
6
"storage"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Held Hostage - can’t undo backup - forced storage purchase. After accidentally keeping the sync/backup this device checked when first loading this app on my iPhone, unable to remove all photos from the Google cloud using an undo backup. This has compromised access to my Gmail account since it’s a sh…" - SLC-reviews
7
"photo"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Held Hostage - can’t undo backup - forced storage purchase. After accidentally keeping the sync/backup this device checked when first loading this app on my iPhone, unable to remove all photos from the Google cloud using an undo backup. This has compromised access to my Gmail account since it’s a sh…" - SLC-reviews
8
"work"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Privacy concern. It refuses to work until i give it full access even though i gave it limited access to photos" - Turkikhld
9
"full access"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Privacy concern. It refuses to work until i give it full access even though i gave it limited access to photos" - Turkikhld
10
"update"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Photos App Still Not Loading Up After Months of the Same Problems. There have been a few updates in the last 2 months or so but the app still doesn't load up as soon as you tap on the icon on Apple iPad Tablet as it has done for YEARS. There are times when the photos are visible but just temporarily. I've …" - Doreena 919
11
"google photos"
5 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Photos App Still Not Loading Up After Months of the Same Problems. There have been a few updates in the last 2 months or so but the app still doesn't load up as soon as you tap on the icon on Apple iPad Tablet as it has done for YEARS. There are times when the photos are visible but just temporarily. I've …" - Doreena 919
12
"delete"
4 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Duplicates issue. Very annoying issue - certain pictures have duplicates and it's very annoying to figure out which one is the real one on device and which is just backed up, and I have to manually delete them all. Please fix it's been happening for years." - Devalshah9
📋 All 25 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Held Hostage - can’t undo backup - forced storage purchase
After accidentally keeping the sync/backup this device checked when first loading this app on my iPhone, unable to remove all photos from the Google cloud using an undo backup. This has compromised access to my Gmail account since it’s a shared storage that has been maxed out. Google keeps trying to sell me more storage. First attempt to free up storage space using the app actually completely deleted photos from the app AND my iPhone and would have been gone forever if I hadn’t noticed that deleting photos from the app ALSO deleted the original photo in my iPhone photos. Restoring from the Google Photo app’s deleted folder was a nightmare of deleting a number of photos I actually never wanted to keep and quickly switching back to the delete file to restore one or two photos before the auto backup filled the storage space again with photos from my iPhone it previously didn’t upload because it had run out of storage. This took hours to recover the initial batch I deleted in the storage cleanup. I have since received complex instructions on the community how to delete the photos from Google storage using a computer but this will also take hours to remove the photos from Google storage so that I can maintain access to my Gmail account.
Privacy concern
It refuses to work until i give it full access even though i gave it limited access to photos
Photos App Still Not Loading Up After Months of the Same Problems
There have been a few updates in the last 2 months or so but the app still doesn't load up as soon as you tap on the icon on Apple iPad Tablet as it has done for YEARS. There are times when the photos are visible but just temporarily. I've done the work around suggested by Google Search but again the results are only temporary. This is at least my 3rd review about this GLITCH.
Update 6-15-26 Days go by and the App doesn't load up my photos. Sometimes a very few appear frozen on the screen,but no more. I can't access my all of my uploaded photos or albums. This is months old now and Continues to be very frustrating even thoughGoogle keeps saying, with each update, bugs have been taken care of.
Update 6-23-26
I received a Message from Google Photos thru Apple Store, offering the option to Update my review or Contact the developer. The later option only forwarded me to the Google Community Website.
At times, very few & in-between, Google Photos will load up on the App, however the page is still frozen. I can't see any more photos than are seen on the opening page. Can't go to Collections, or Help page or Google Photo Messages per the Bell icon. If the Help page does load up and I tap on Help it may buffers & buffer. If able to go to Collections it's frozen as well.
Update 6-15-26 Days go by and the App doesn't load up my photos. Sometimes a very few appear frozen on the screen,but no more. I can't access my all of my uploaded photos or albums. This is months old now and Continues to be very frustrating even thoughGoogle keeps saying, with each update, bugs have been taken care of.
Update 6-23-26
I received a Message from Google Photos thru Apple Store, offering the option to Update my review or Contact the developer. The later option only forwarded me to the Google Community Website.
At times, very few & in-between, Google Photos will load up on the App, however the page is still frozen. I can't see any more photos than are seen on the opening page. Can't go to Collections, or Help page or Google Photo Messages per the Bell icon. If the Help page does load up and I tap on Help it may buffers & buffer. If able to go to Collections it's frozen as well.
Change to layout
The new layout is completely unusable for me. I can't tell what the chronological order of my photos is and I can't easily tell what date they were taken.
app is a brick right now
when i open the app, i see a blurry version of the home screen but i cant interact with anything or scroll. edit: app is updated and i have plenty of storage. no crash report pops up and there’s no way to get in touch with someone. re-downloading the app did not fix it.
It Stopped
Every since these past two updates, the app stopped working. It stopped responding it freezes. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled several times and it doesn’t do anything.
Incredibly unstable
The app crashes constantly and the delete backed up photos function simply doesn’t work.
I would search for alternatives.
I would search for alternatives.
Too Invasive
Google photos will only display the photos I have only if I grant full access to the photos and videos on my device. This is not okay, I will not allow them to strongarm me into harvesting my data and my photos
App is no longer usable
Hi, sending this message in regards to to the google photo app now completely being UNUSABLE on my iPad 16. The UI is shot and broken not being able to access my family photos leaving me to portage what I can salvage over to another album software. Please look into this.
Still Yuck
Change the Google Photos view back to the previous version. I hate the update. It looks exactly like apple photos and that’s the whole reason I kept using google. Ugh!! Disappointed…
And now can’t even use the plus sign to order photos, books, frames, etc… please fix!!!
And now can’t even use the plus sign to order photos, books, frames, etc… please fix!!!
App won’t work
App is frozen and I can do anything in the app with my photos it’s locked I have done all the suggested troubleshooting ideas and nothing has helped I have not been able to access my photos in the google app for three days now. Used to love this app but I am so frustrated by this… it’s also frozen on my tablet too…
Delete
Keeps freezing and not loading. It’s been happening for 4+ days. I’m also paying for extra storage which I’m debating on canceling.
You’re Google so figure it out
You’re Google so figure it out
New layout
Update: What’s up the Developer Response to everyone to share feedback elsewhere?! I thought that’s what we were doing here. (But I did it anyway.)
HATE the new layout! Why would you take away the day, month divisions? Totally unusable now.
HATE the new layout! Why would you take away the day, month divisions? Totally unusable now.
Not functioning due to access requested
I’ve used this app for years, most of googles products for that matter. Only today has it started requesting full access only to not allow me to even grant it in the settings. Was this an update that just failed or what could possibly cause such a simple process to be impossible all of a sudden?
Nonresponsive
The app is stuck and nonresponsive when I open it up. Apple’s gallery is perfectly fine. This started a few weeks ago.
Search by date
What happened to searching photos by a date and seeing that date through prior years? I used to do clean up this way and has now made it a time consuming and not easy task. Please bring this search functionality back
Stop asking me to backup!
The app consistently prompts me to turn on backup with a huge accept and tiny cancel button. This is malicious behavior and highly annoying with no way to turn off.
1 star for forced full access
I will no longer use this app. They require forced Full access to your photo albums. I just want to use the google lens feature but now they force you to allow them only fully access. No limited access option. To heck with that and giving you my photos so you can use them. Nope. Done with this app now unless you fix it.
1 star for full access
If I need to give full access you get 1 star
Demands too much
I use Google suite for a lot. Sheets, drive, mail, and have normally been happy with it. But this app is bad. Every other photo storage app you can select pictures it has access to. But this app will only work if it has access to EVERYTHING. And then it will automatically try to upload it all. It does not need that much access as not every picture is needed or wanted to be uploaded. 1 star is even too much for that sort of user experience.
Duplicates issue
Very annoying issue - certain pictures have duplicates and it's very annoying to figure out which one is the real one on device and which is just backed up, and I have to manually delete them all. Please fix it's been happening for years.
Sticking
Lately the app keeps sticking. Why have all these updates that aren’t making the software programs better ?
Crashes and freezes
New update DID NOT fix these issues. I’m so disappointed, because normally I love Google Photos.
Fee
Not thrilled to keep paying higher fees.
Good App but I can’t even use it.
I save all my photos in files because I don’t want my iCloud storage to get full, but then I decided that Google Photos might be better to organize them but YOU CANT EVEN IMPORT PHOTOS FROM FILES!!!!!!
Sentiment summary
96%
Positive (4-5★)
1%
Neutral (3★)
3%
Negative (1-2★)