I accidentally tapped "Free up space" in Google Photos on my Motorola Stylus, and now the photos no longer appear in my phone's local gallery or when I try to upload them to Instagram. They still seem to be backed up in Google Photos, but I have around 10,000 images and don't want to download them one at a time. Is there a way to restore or mass-download them to my phone or a computer? If I download them again, will that create duplicates, or can I safely keep the cloud copies and local copies together? I'm also worried about eventually having to pay for cloud storage.
3 Answers
“Free up space” normally removes only the copies stored on your phone; it does not delete the backed-up versions in Google Photos. Open a photo in Google Photos and check its details to confirm it says it’s backed up. If you only need to post or share something, use Google Photos’ Share button and choose Instagram or another app directly. Also check the Photos trash just in case anything was actually deleted.
This is a good reason to keep a separate backup on an external drive. Cloud syncing and phone storage are not the same thing, and features like “Free up space” can remove local files once they’re safely uploaded. Before restoring everything, make sure you have enough phone storage, or keep the full archive on a computer or external drive and only copy the photos you actually need to your phone.
For a large collection, use Google Takeout from a computer and export your Google Photos library. You can then download the archive, extract it, and copy the images back to your phone in batches. This is much more practical than downloading 10,000 photos individually. Downloading them again creates local copies; it doesn’t automatically delete the cloud versions, so you can keep both unless you deliberately remove one.
My main concern is not wanting to pay for cloud storage forever, so I’d like to get everything downloaded somewhere safe and then reduce what I keep online.