Google Photos Feature Request

Comments (Archived):

1. +10000 on this. Every time I try to embed a Google Photo in a blog post I go through the song and dance of trying to get it to work and then have to download the pic and post it manually.

2. Google Photos is possibly the number one thing that makes me think twice about leaving the Pixel prison. Being assured that i will not lose photos is comforting. Yes, the mechanics of sending them around the web is clunky. I do get frustrated when i just want ‘that to go there’. In my mind it happens so effortlessly…sigh.

   1. i have a nonpixel phone with google photos app on it, photos automatically get synced to cloud. so not sure you need pixel? unless i misinterprted your comment

      1. i think you understood, and perhaps i misunderstand the possibilities with Google Photos. Is your way operating exactly as Google Photos works on a Pixel (if you’re familiar with the Pixel experience)?

         1. i’m not familiar with pixel experience, but if you want photos you take with your phone to automatically be uploaded to google photos, that should be possible on pretty much any phones with google photos app installed. most of my family has iphones and they have auto backup via the iOS google photos app setup. can also set it up to delete locally after backup if that is preferred.

            1. Not only is it possible with the Google Photos app, but it works *way* better than any other app I have found for this and the search/categorization, etc is way better, too. It even geolocates photos based on ML and *not* the tags (by recognizing landmarks and scenes). It’s not perfect by any stretch (feature request is but one of the many things I’d like to see developed there), but it is, by far, the best Google (non-search) product I use.

            2. With Pixels, you have a 2-yr window during which backup of full-rez pics is free and unlimited. Non-Pixel users only have that for “high-rez” (ie, not “full-rez”) pics; full-rez pics get taken from gDrive’s 15GB quota, as they are for Pixel users after 2 yrs.AFAIK, the rest is the exact same.

            3. ahh, interesting — good to know! thanks for sharing!

            4. I’ll try it on my Xiaomi.

            5. Which xiaomi do you have now?

3. i agree with this feature request, i’ve wanted it too, though i wonder if htey dont offer this on purpose because they dont want to be the world’s default image hosting service for apps. in other words they want to steer those folks to google cloud storage (where they can pay for it) and keep photos for sharing with an intimate group.

4. Agree! I find that I have to upload photos to another cloud solution to share them because the only way to share them now is to send a link to someone’s email address but the email address must be Google-based for the person to be able to access the images. My clients don’t get it so it’s easier to move the photos to another cloud solution then send a share link. I used to use Dropbox but switched to Box about a year ago.

5. I also love google photos! But my issue is that it’s inexplicably hard to move pictures from google photos to google drive. I think I have to download them to my pc and then upload them into drive. That makes no sense to me but I haven’t found another way.

   1. Yeah. That’s another issue. Totally agree

      1. https://uploads.disquscdn.c… There’s a gDrive setting for that, you can then drag and drop within gDrive:

         1. thanks!!

            1. there is but it’s a 1 time copy. If for any reason you change the folder structure or contents in gDrive it doesn’t copy back. Frustrating

6. If I understand the question the feature exists. See the two screen grabs showing what you do below that I have attached.https://photos.google.com/s…… https://uploads.disquscdn.c… https://uploads.disquscdn.c…

   1. that generates a link, not an embed code

      1. I realized that after posting. Google is doing this on purpose for a specific reason most certainly. A guess is that the actual click has value to them in some way and the lack of a click creates a concern with undesirable content.

7. So, some software developers implement a feature but don’t document it for users and instead just leave the feature, maybe with some obscure icon, for users to discover and figure out via the TIFO method — try it and find out.IMHO this approach is mud wrestling and doomed to frustration and eventually failure as Fred’s struggles well illustrate.Apparently parts of the problem include:(1) Xerox PARC believed that they had found the future of user interfaces (UI) in computing in their GUI (graphical user interface) that was supposed to be as obvious as the control panel on a well designed microwave oven. Well, it’s not the future of UI in computing.(2) PARC believed in icons, believed that some such tiny pictures with usually really goofy cartoon images with usually totally obscure meaning would be the future of UI in computing. Partly the icons have been saved by the practice of roll overs where give a few words of user documentation when the mouse cursor rests on the icon without moving for one or a few seconds. Other partly saving practices are pull-down menus and pop-up windows. Nope, can’t be the future of UI.Icons: Can’t pronounce them, type them, look them up in a dictionary, sort them, etc. Without ability to sort, tough to write code to look them up in a data base.Civilization had icons and finally replaced them with especially the Roman alphabet we still have. Countries still stuck on icons have a heck of a disadvantage.From icons instead of words in the Roman alphabet and the general use of TIFO instead of documentation, there is a pattern: Computing can’t write natural language to document their work and is, say, functionally illiterate. Sad situation.Math has lots of symbols unknown in the rest of civilization but is fully able to document everything about those symbols. Computing is still lost here. For more, with D. Knuth’s TeX can type such math using just the Roman alphabet with its advantages.The problem has some deep origins: Computing doesn’t know how to document code or algorithms and, in particular, thus is fundamentally poor at verification of their work. Bluntly math can be accurately reviewed but algorithms and code cannot. There are ways to document algorithms if only as a by-product of the techniques of proof of correctness which commonly boils down to an argument via mathematical induction, but these techniques are understood by only a tiny fraction of software developers and actually used by a smaller fraction.So, algorithms and code are essentially merely presented, and reviewers are forced just to study either of them and conclude just by some judgment that either is correct. Yes, some errors can be found with the corresponding line(s) of code pointed to, but lacking any such specific errors we are still without any rational means of evaluation.The functional illiteracy continues in inability to describe the assumptions of code, to give clear statements of code objectives, etc. This situation was realized long ago: For a proof of correctness, need to specify precisely both the inputs and the outputs, and for a lot of complicated code that is too difficult.Part of this functional illiteracy is the use of undefined terms, jargon, and acronyms. E.g., what the heck is an “embedded code”? Yes, at Google there is:The “embed code” is a block of HTML which is embedded in the page-source and creates the video object in doing so. It needs to be obtained from a site already hosting the video, because the “embed code” points back to that site. For e.g. YouTube, see picture – copy the code, paste it where it is asked for.but even that doesn’t make the feature clear.I’ve long since concluded that the functional illiteracy of computing is the biggest bottleneck to progress in the field — no joke.So users, developers, etc. are stuck with clicking, clicking, clicking, guessing and trying over and over, experimenting, etc. And even when appear to get desired results, tough to know how general the solution is, and with the inability to type icons it is tough to document the work in, say, English. Bottleneck. Mud wrestling.My code? I’m able to document it and do. My software user interface? No icons, roll-overs, pull-downs, or pop-ups — not even one.The Xerox PARC icons were a giant step backwards from the Roman alphabet — can’t pronounce, spell, type, sort, look up, etc. — to goofy little pictures that are a pain.Irony: Google really likes icons but in the single line text box of their search engine, a user must type using an alphabet, IIRC, the Roman alphabet, and can’t enter or look up icons.

8. Since this is the best help forum I have seen on Google Photos, does anyone know the answer to the following:1. After moving a photo to an album, is there a way to remove it from the “Photos” list? After I move a photo to an album, I want it removed from the Photos list in order for me to confirm how many I have left to move. Right now after moving the photo to an album it still shows in the Photos list and I never can remember how many I have left to move.

   1. There’s not and many people have requested this functionality on forums. I put in a request on the Photo product feedback form for this feature

9. Too busy yesterday to catch this in time…Glad to see someone pointed you in the right direction, but yes there are multiple code generators out there, and i’ve done this successfully using a couple of them:https://www.google.com/sear…

   1. For example, here’s another 3rd party tool that works, https://ctrlq.org/google/ph…Disqus won’t let me use it here in this comment. but here it is on a webpage I made:http://kenberger.com/embedp…

10. I was aware of the Google photo embed functionality but does anyone know of a way to easily take a screenshot on a mac and then have it in an easy way to implement in wordpress.My current workflow:1. Screenshot image2. Upload to Google Photos3. Share image4. Embed using: https://ctrlq.org/google/ph…5. C+P embed code into WP.I’ve thought of using Gdrive for this and setting my screenshot location on my mac to upload to the cloud. I’d then use a gdrive link to embed this to WP. However, I’ve searched for a way to embed gDrive images and can’t find one.Anyone have a solution for this?

    1. Solution to the above.Reasons for using Drive vs Google Photos is you don’t taint your awesome Google Photos with a bunch of photos from WordPress that you’ll probably need to then Archive at a later point.Use case: Quickly uploading screenshots/saved photos from Mac/iPhone to share on WordPress in an embedded image.1. Set up a folder in Gdrive / on your desktop for photos / screenshots for WordPress photos – I call mine “Screenshots”2. Change location of where mac saves screenshots: https://www.macworld.co.uk/…. Have the location be the “Screenshots” folder.3. If you want iPhone screenshots to be saved to the same folder you can use this IFTT.com recipe: https://ifttt.com/applets/1…4. Whenever you save photos for a blog (obviously rights free) save the photos to this folder. Everything will sync to the cloud5. Follow instructions on this page to create a public link: https://confluence.biola.ed…6. You can then use the functionality in WordPress to embed image through “Insert URL”This takes the time to embed an image or screenshot down to about 30 seconds