Google Photos is one of those services, among others like Dropbox, OneDrive, and Flickr, that automatically back up your photos. All of these services are helpful in providing quick access to your photos on any device. However, only Google Photos will offer you a true unlimited backup of your photos. This is because, unlike other services, Google Photos has many features that the rest do not. For example, the ability to automatically remove duplicate images, store your photos in high resolution for free, and a built-in tagging icon, among others. Although Google Photos hasn’t been around for a long time, it’s one of the fastest growing services with more than 500 million active users today.
Since Google Photos offers the best backup services, any user should be familiar with all its features to get effective services. Here are 15 useful tricks to master Google Photos:
1. Turn off mobile data
This is essential for smartphone users who do not have unlimited data. Many users use Google Photos not only to backup existing photos on their cameras, but also to automatically backup images that were taken on their smartphones. For this reason, it is crucial to disable mobile data backup and also allow Google Photos app to only backup when you are charging your phone to protect battery life.
2. Upload old photos
To save more storage space, it is important that you upload your old photos to the Google Photos library. This is a simple process that only involves dragging and dropping photos from your external storage. In the library, photos will appear based on the date they were taken, making it easier for you to locate them when you need them. Your connectivity will determine how long the charging process will take.
3. Free up more space on your phone
For a user without an SD card or a phone with unlimited storage, it is important to regularly free up space on your device. Google Photos does this very well just by tapping free device storage in the settings menu. This is a safe process because even though the backed up photos will be deleted, you can always access them when you are connected to the internet.
4. Tag your photos
Tagging people in your photos will come in handy in the future. This is because you can easily identify them by searching for them by name in Google Photos. This makes it easy to find each photo of the person you are looking for. It also saves time, especially when you’re in a rush.
5. Get free unlimited storage
Google Photos offers unlimited storage with a little caveat. It only offers a maximum resolution of 16MP. This can be tricky when saving videos and photos in their original quality because they will consume all the space there is. To solve this, it is crucial to save your photos and videos in high-quality resolution. This mainly helps you free up some space.
6. Edit and save your photos
Google Photos has an option to edit your photos with the desired look you are looking for. This function allows you to add a background color, crop, and more. You can easily remove what you don’t want in your videos or pictures. However, it is important to save the images once you edit them.
7. Remove geolocation
The pictures and videos were taken by your phone today and have a lot of location details. This is good for storage because you will want to remember all the details. However, Google Photos uses such information to actively map where your images were taken. This is not good because you don’t want the people viewing or receiving these photos to know exactly where they were taken, especially when you share them via email. For this reason, it is best to remove the geolocation.
8. Backup photos from other apps
Google Photos doesn’t just back up the photos you take on your tablet or smartphone. It has a feature that allows you to backup your photos to other applications such as Instagram and Facebook, among others. You can easily choose which devices to enable backup in the settings menu.
9. Animated photos
This is another simple trick that makes your photo gallery that much more entertaining. The ability to create collages, slideshows, animations, and movies from your photos becomes very simple. All you need is to work with the ‘wizard section’ where you get suggestion cards for making different animations or collages. This automatic Google creation makes photo editing exciting.
10. Test your search option
It is important to understand how to use this. It is useful when looking for videos and images similar to what you are looking for. Play around with the search option, but only search Google Photos using common and obscure names.
11. Share and stop sharing
Google Photos comes with a unique feature that makes it easy to share photos and videos. This is through a link that easily shares an image or several of them. It is important to check them regularly so that you get rid of the ones you no longer need. It’s easily done through the shared links icon in the app.
12. View your photos and videos on Google Drive
This is one of the tricks that everyone who uses Google Photos should know. You can easily view your photos and videos through the photo interface. This feature is useful especially if you already have a lot of text on your Google Drive.
13. Send videos to YouTube
This is another trick that makes video sharing quick and easy. Google Photos has an option to import photos and videos directly to your YouTube channel. It also gives the option to add a title, tag them and share them.
14. Make stories from photos
This feature makes Google Photos very interesting. Stories are often like guided albums that have captions. This is easily done through mobile applications. The process involves selecting relevant images, adding captions and locations to provide more information.
15. Change your view
Changing your view mainly involves zooming in and out to better see your images. This is sometimes done using two fingers. However, Google Photos offers an easier option to do the same. The service allows you to change the view of the mobile application so that you can get a comfortable view.