Google Photos

What reviewers actually said

Built only from these 120 real reviews (foreign ones translated). Superscripts jump to the quote here. Apple has no per-review links, so [ref] opens that app's reviews on the App Store.

1. [R34] 3/5 · US Good at one thing. And only that.: I’ve been using Google Photos for years. At its core, it’s great. It backs up my photos without my having to do anything. But that’s on one account. I have multiple Google accounts that I use regularly. The Google Photos app is only useful with the account I back up to. And here’s why. I can’t filter between backed up and non-backed up photos. The Google Photos
2. [R6] 5/5 · US Google Photos: I use this app frequently. I haven’t had any problems with storage of my photos. Sometimes quality isn’t that good but overall it’s a good app. I would recommend it to anyone.
3. [R18] 5/5 · US The best: I love this app!! You can store all your videos and pictures.. then delete them off your phone photo app.. freeing up some much needed space! Highly recommended!
4. [R4] 5/5 · US Very cool!: I love how they make videos for you , very cool! keep up the great work!
5. [R13] 5/5 · US Smiles: Goggle does a good job with photos to create fun memories!
6. [R24] 5/5 · US 🤩: I love how Google Photos bring back memories at what always seems like the right time
7. [R45] 5/5 · US Love the memories and collage: I enjoy scrolling on my phone and seeing a memory pop up and reliving the moment, thanks google 🫶🏽🎊
8. [R32] 5/5 · US Memories: I love all the memories I have over the years with Google Photos. It’s nice to merge between my Samsung and my iPhone.
9. [R25] 5/5 · US Mi favorito: Poderoso y útil para buscar. Mucho mejor para encontrar fotos que Apple
10. [R19] 5/5 · US Easy and I always find what I need!: My albums and pics are always easy to find and share
11. [R50] 3/5 · US Bring back MONTHLY VIEW!!: May 1, 2026: I WANT OFF THIS ISLAND!! These updates are seriously getting worse with EVERY update since changing and removing the monthly layout! July 4th: The updates are steady getting worse! Google Photos literally stopped working for me on July 3rd. It started freezing and not opening all the way. Multiple phone reboots did nothing. I hesitated but gave in and upda
12. [R54] 2/5 · US Crashes constantly: This app has gotten steadily worse over the years. It crashes constantly on my iPad. Very frustrating.
13. [R74] 1/5 · US Always crashes.: Ever since the big update, I haven’t been able to use magic eraser among a few other tools without the entire app crashing and causing me to lose my editing progress.
14. [R86] 3/5 · US Performance is horrible: I used to love this app and am married to it because all my photos from over the years are in it. However, the last year or two the performance has continued to deteriorate. The app is so impossibly slow and sometimes doesn’t load at all. Hoping to amend this review if updates are finally made, but I’m tired of waiting and hoping.
15. [R1] 1/5 · US Nosy and not worth it: Wanted to upload my photos to a shared album on this app from a work team bonding event. It was a really fun day and I wanted to contribute. If I could select certain photos from my library I would’ve done just that and have a neutral to positive experience on this app. But no, I spent many minutes of my life poking around the app, not knowing why the selected photos I chose
16. [R2] 1/5 · US shady practice: This app keeps tricking me into enabling photo backup, forcing me to buy more space without understanding how I ran out in the first place. I just had to spend an hour undoing it manually because I’m worried the bulk undo option will erase photos I manually added to shared albums. You have lost my trust and I will be migrating to a different app.
17. [R27] 1/5 · US Won’t work unless you give Google access to all your photos: Do you want to add a few photos from vacation to a friend’s share Google photo album? Well, forget it, this app will not let you access and share a few photos, it wants every single photo on your phone. The app claims to allow “limited access” but you can punch that button all day, it won’t work. Then, once you allow “full access,” and h
18. [R85] 1/5 · US Steal your privacy: After update, you cant choose some photos to publish anymore. Only "give me all your photos" or "nothing" options.
19. [R9] 3/5 · US Photos won’t delete: I have been a longtime Google Photos user. We’re talking years!!! In the past 6 months I have noticed when I press delete on photos, it doesn’t actually delete. I will have to delete the same photo 3x sometimes Prior to it actually deleting and stop taking up my storage quota. Also, now that it’s not free, there’s little difference between paying here and paying for extra iClo
20. [R23] 2/5 · US Deletes photos from your device.: Update to review: I got a response from the developer with links about my issues and how to resolve it, and typical of developers they did not read my review. They skimmed it to look for key words or used an AI to "read" it. The link they gave me was what I suggested in my review to new users. I had already read through their help section and it is the same as th
21. [R96] 1/5 · US Stolen photos - unable to delete: I downloaded Google Photos to upload photos to a friend’s wedding album. I did not turn on backups from my device and it stole every photo from my iPhone library and had the GALL to request money for “too much storage” without giving me the option to delete all the photos. It would take me hours to do this manually, and thus cannot access my Google budget without
22. [R113] 2/5 · US “Deletion request” TF?!?: I’m getting the “deletion requested-waiting for operating system to respond” message when I’m trying to delete pictures when it NEVER did this before. BUT if I click on a picture one by one, they’ll delete fast? (Some still say deletion requested) Yes my WiFi works and yes my damn app updated.
23. [R93] 3/5 · US photo grid update: Myself and so many other users of google photos who I know, HATE, the new main photo grid. There is no need to have Recent moments, cinematics (which i turned off but still get), videos, and people and pets show up. there is literally a separate tab for that i can go to i don’t need it getting in the way of trying to find what i’m actually looking for in my photos. it’s large an
24. [R112] 2/5 · US Layout: I don’t know why they keep changing the photo layout grid to be all lumped together but it is extremely frustrating… it really makes me want to change services…. There was never even an issue with the old layout!! The photos were nicely organized!!
25. [R162] 1/5 · US 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.
26. [R360] 3/5 · GB Latest update is awful: The latest update makes your photos in the main grid randomly bigger and some stay the standard size, making it really hard to look through your photos as some are twice as big as others. No way to turn this AI feature off, no replies to the different forums asking about it either. Just seems really strange. Otherwise I think the app is great just wish that AI wasn’t pushe
27. [R7] 1/5 · US Never uploads correctly: I imagine this product works well on Android, but on iOS it has been a complete mess for sometime. Images will not upload even when you leave your phone open, you cannot remove images from albums, images disappear from albums, and the list goes on. Fire these PMs and start over from scratch.
28. [R33] 1/5 · US Slow, won’t upload or download videos: It always fails to download or upload videos or live pictures. Worked so well then suddenly about a week ago the app is basically useless. Trying to move my archives over and now I’m regretting wasting so much time.
29. [R133] 2/5 · US Slow: Backup is taking an extremely long time lately. I am not sure what changed but my photos used to be backed up without so much as thinking about it, now I seem to have to keep the app open for hours on end and each photo / video takes several minutes
30. [R461] 3/5 · GB Bugs since latest update.: There’s a few bugs since the latest update, the main one being that when you open Google Photos to upload photos it doesn’t work and you have to close the app and re-open for them to sync.
31. [R102] 2/5 · US Glitches with Albums?: Shared albums filled with photos now have zero photos and no cover photo. Tried deleting the app and redownloading. Creating new ones and sharing them doesn’t work either. The new albums I created eventually go back to zero photos as well. I have no storage issues on this device nor with Google cloud storage.
32. [R110] 3/5 · US Photo to video feature is broken: With the most recent update, the photo to video feature does not work anymore. It states that every photo is “too small,” even though it fits perfectly within the frame. This was never an issue before. Update: after the newest update where they said there were bug fixes, the feature is still broken. Update: there have been several app updates since my initial re
33. [R751] 3/5 · AU Features: The eraser tool produces very odd results
34. [R842] 3/5 · AU Ok but needs improvement: The old photo edits gave you everything to do the best job available, given the technology of the time. Being unable to fix red eye is no longer available and the ability to fix up old photos has receded. Sadly I now live in the ‘pay more’ era if I want to get access to these features again.
35. [R82] 2/5 · US Search is not working: When searching for something it’s not bringing up photos that relate to what I’m searching for. It only shows my current photos I’ve taken from today and the prior days.
36. [R5] 1/5 · US 🚨 🚨 BLOATED app size approaching HALF a GIGABYTE, spams notifications ⛔️: Google Photos was 420.5 MBs and growing to… 423.3 MBs… And like all Google apps, the Photos app is well on its way to AN ENTIRE GIGABYTE (see Gmail). 🚨 This is deplorable and comically out of touch while phone prices are increasing and consumers are crunched for storage, and by the way: bandwidth caps and overage costs exis
37. [R46] 1/5 · US You can STOP: I don’t want you going into my photos at all. I did not ask for any of your little collages or montages. I don’t like you snooping through my stuff and then showing me what you made. If I want a collage, I will buy an app to make then myself. Eff Off!
38. [R12] 1/5 · US Terrible UX: Which ever PM/Designer decided this should be a UX and it should be this hard to manually upload a photo to google photos should find a new career. This app is borderline unusable if you don’t want to use automatic backup… I want to manually upload a photo from my iphone, no, I don’t want to scroll through my entire google 10k+ google photo collection most of which are not on my iphon
39. [R62] 1/5 · US Took up all my Google storage, and I cannot unlink it from my Google account: I don’t even remember creating a Google Photos account and linking it to my iPhone camera roll, but somehow it has access to every single photo and video, and is taking up all my Google storage. I never use this app for anything, but there is no way to unlink it to free up more storage for my Google account (Gmail, drive
40. [R8] 5/5 · US Awesome: Thank you for your help selecting special people, events and places and sharing with me.
41. [R140] 3/5 · US Crop Update: I don’t like the new crop update, can you please change it back before?
42. [R697] 3/5 · CA Where is magic eraser?: The sharing function built in to the app was one of the best things about it, made sharing with family so easy. Where is magic eraser? No sign of it. Google has really tried making things more and more difficult for families to use, especially for seniors.