When Windows users suddenly discover that their files have vanished from their desktops after interacting with OneDrive, the issue often stems from how Microsoft’s cloud service integrates with the operating system. The automatic, near-invisible shift to cloud-based storage has triggered strong reactions from users who find the feature unintuitive and, in some cases, destructive to their local files.
I have similar issue with Google.
At some point I used to use Google Photos backups. I wanted to delete the backed up files, but there’s no way to do that. It would also delete them from the devices.
And I guess it checks them based on hash, because even in the main view it always figures out where the files are currently stored, if on device, even after I moved them elsewhere. Otherwise these other images only show up in their respective folders, not the main view.
I had trouble like this too, so what I’ve done is just give up on using Google photos in any meaningful way.
I still sync to it as a temporary backup, but I periodically copy all media from my device to my local home storage as the true copy.
I have yet to implement a proper open-source alternative for photo organization, but hopefully that’ll be one of the projects completed this year.
One of the problems I was having was that I wanted to take photos that I did not want to sync to Google photos, and yeah just deleting them from Google photos would delete them from my device as well. to get around this, you can force quit the application on your phone, work with the photos however you want, and then restart the application. as long as the photos aren’t in a location you have set to sync to Google photos, it should be fine. also sorry to my coworker who had to see a whole row of photos of my dogs disgusting butthole with a ruptured anal gland before I figured that out.
Just in case you’ve not heard of it, I can highly recommend Immich. If you’re familiar with Docker it’s incredibly easy to set up, and even if you’re not it’s not that complicated.