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We can’t for the life of us figure out why Google made the photos you back up to Google+ separate from Google Drive, but it’s one of the reasons we’ve favored competing services like Dropbox over the years. There have been rumors that Google may soon breakaway Photos into its own service away from Google+ and we’ve kept our ears to the ground counting down the minutes Google would finally free our photos from Google+’s walled garden.
Now, before we jump into our news bit, we want to urge you to take this latest tip with a grain of salt. A Reddit user — with an account in good standing — posted this screenshot of his Google Drive settings with the mysterious new option to “Automatically put your Google Photos into a folder in My Drive.” However, looking over the thread — which has a 100% upvote rating — there doesn’t seem to be anyone else seeing this option in their Google Drive settings.
That being said, we’re not sure of this user’s specific region. It’s possible Google could be testing a feature like this in specific markets before rolling it out to everyone. That, or this could be someone’s idea of a sick joke in an effort to troll the Google/Android community (in which case it’d be an odd, very specific joke).
With that, we ask you guys to hop into your Google Drive > Settings > General and see if you have the “Create a Google Photos folder” option available. Anyone?
UPDATE: The Reddit user has returned to the thread, posting some additional details:
“I enabled the option yesterday but I don’t see a new folder as of now. There’s also a new “Google Photos” tab in the left sidebar which only shows photos from G+.”
Photo proof:
The plot thickens…
about…. time!
Nope you been troll :S
Nothing on either my personal or gapps accounts.
Zero interest in G+ and how they are forcing it onto us in every way relative to their products. Heck, certain services you cannot even participate in – like YouTube – unless you have a G+ account (unless you have a legacy account prior to them acquiring it). I DON’T want everything I do related to be Google to have some sort of public social aspect related to G+. Some items I just want to be as they are, NO social media related value.
So IF this is true, I will not use it AND if I can in any way opt to remove that folder, I will.
If it is true that would be great to finally seperate our photos from G+
Forced G+ has been gone for a while now, after the YouTube backlash they removed this requirement.
I try to make comments on YouTube, it will only allow me IF I change my legacy YouTube account to a G+. And, that is not going to happen. So, I still see the forced G+. They force you to make a “channel” and then that ties to G+.
“Your channel comes with a public Google+ profile. It helps friends find your videos and other content you share on Google” – uhhhh no thanks.
That’s why this update is so huge. It could be the start of Photos finally moving away from Google+ and being backed up directly in Drive.
Before Google can do that, they gotta get everyone’s already backed up photos into Drive (which is what could be happening here).
I’m confused. What difference does it make if Youtube is linked to Google+ or not? If you don’t even use Google+ and leave everything private, why would it matter where your account info is stored? It could be Youtube only, or Google+ which is an All-In-One service.
I mean, I get the username part. Some people use their legitimately name in Google, so it’ll show their actual name. Other than that I really don’t care that services are tied to Google+. If I make a comment, it can be seen on Youtube, so why does it matter that it also shows on Google+? The comment is public anyways.
I think there’s something I’m missing.
Could be a hoax. This took me about a minute to fake with dev tools in Chrome.
You, random internet guy, are awesome
We’ve updated the post with additional information and screenshots we received from the user.
Well, I for one would welcome it. Bring it on! :-P
suppose the greyed out logo is a hoax too?
I now back up all my photos and videos to Amazon. With the Prime subscription, it’s unlimited storage. Can’t beat that.
How many ways can you say it — forcing the user to back up photos to Google+ is counter-intuitive and user hostile, and ONLY being done to promote Google+.
The photos don’t even integrate with GMail. If I don’t want to “share” the photo via a ‘private’ Google+ post, I have to first download them to my computer, then e-mail them.
Of everything Google that I use — their photo backup system is the worst, by miles.
This should help bridge the gap.
You can easily email pictures from your Google Photos without sharing them via Google Plus. You just compose an e-mail and click the ‘Insert Photo’ button, pick the photo you want to send from your Photo account and that’s it. It doesn’t show up as a post, or anywhere in your Google Plus stream.
What a wicked PITA…..Youre cruising through your pics and want to send one, but now you have to exit photos, bring up gmail, attach picture and send…….and google loves talking about how much time they save you LOL
Okay then.
Find the picture you want in Google Photos. Right click – Copy image location.
Compose e-mail, insert photo -> from URL, paste.
That’s a quicker method if you don’t want to have to hunt for the photo all over again in G-mail while picking which picture to attach. Not ideal but it’s a workaround that will do the job.
You could also just open up Gmail in a new window and drag and drop the picture in a compose window and it will attach. Full resolution.
For the most part I’m at my device anyways, so any pic I want to send via Gmail, I just use the share button.
It’s a lot simpler than folks are making this out to be… Of course streaming into Dive would be an idea solution, but you just gotta deal with it in the meantime.
EDIT: To clarify I mean ‘you’ as in people in general. I just agreeing with you and adding another option for the folks complaining.
You’re right! Thanks. I’m sure there was something about sharing photos that was painful — I’ll have to see if I come across it again.
even more annoying is that if you use android all is OK and pics get shared ‘normally’
I have this new option in my Google drive settings. I live in Chicago, if that matters.
I also live in Chicago and I don’t have the option.
I never have liked how Google Photos is separated from Google Drive, so this would be a good improvement. I’m a little concerned with its placement though. Since it’s not actually under “My Drive”, it may just be a shortcut and the services are still not truly merged. Until my photos start downloading through Google Drive Sync, I won’t be satisfied.
Show of hands if you still prefer (and use) Picasa Web Albums!
O/
I seriously hope they do this. Right now I have to use dropbox to get my pictures to my PC, then chuck them into drive (since I prefer to pay 2$/month over the dropbox price).
Canceled my Google Drive subscription and switched to OneDrive. It’s a much better deal. For the same monthly price as Google Drive ($20 less with annual subscription), I get five accounts with 1TB each and MS has announced its being raised to unlimited. My primary account already shows 10TB. Also get 60 Skype International minutes a month and can install the full version of Office on 5 PCs and the mobile version on 5 devices.
Camera app uploads to Onedrive for photo backup and sharing. I will admit the iOS app seems to have a bug where the upload doesn’t kick off unless you open the app. Android app works fine.
2048px is nothing – that’s why I don’t use it. That’s 3.1MP. Most of my pics are higher than that.
I just use IFTTT to sync my photos to google drive
I’d imagine they are just trying to push Google+ but the positive side of it’s automatic upload is that you get free, unlimited storage up to 2048px. Of course, any above that it counts against your Drive quota. Which is why an option should be there to create a Drive folder for your pictures.
It’s not a terribly big deal to me, as I use Autosync for Google Drive
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttxapps.drivesync
I just point the app to my Camera folder on my device, and point it to the “camera upload” I created in my Drive account and every time I take a picture, it takes care of the rest! The great part about the app is that I can create all kinds of folders for auto upload. I currently have one for music, documents and downloads.
That’s great…. But what do you do about all the pictures/videos that are already backed up to google+ for the last few years… I have over 10’000