Comment by voidUpdate
4 days ago
Android does this too. I don't really want all my photos indexed like that, I just want a linear timeline of photos, but I cant turn off their "memories" thing or all the analysis they do to them
4 days ago
Android does this too. I don't really want all my photos indexed like that, I just want a linear timeline of photos, but I cant turn off their "memories" thing or all the analysis they do to them
Android doesn't do this. Everything is opt-in.
Granted they require you to opt-in in order for the photos app to be usable & if you go out of your way to avoid opting in they make your photo-browsing life miserable with prompts & notifications. But you do still have to opt-in.
Google loves doing this.
If you dare turn off Play Protect for example, you will be asked to turn it on every time you install or update anything. Never mind that you said no the last thousand times it asked.
> Google loves doing this.
Tech companies love doing this. Apple does the same, so does Microsoft.
If you know some choice isn't right for you (now or forever), the company is feeling extra beautiful today, and you're in luck, you'll get a "Do this now, or I'll remind you later" choice. But then sometimes they just decide that "This is how things are now".
I've had this happen in every environment except Linux, where I get to shoot myself in the foot whenever I want, and sometimes a bit more.
It says it's "opt in" but as someone who hasn't opted in, I still get the notifications and I can see a split second preview of all the stuff they're not supposed to have computed before it asks me to opt in. So there's DEFINITELY shenanigans ocurring.
A number of good third-party photo-browsing apps make it non-miserable, even if you never open Google Photos or even uninstall it.
I've seen a lot of people saying this generally but no specific recommendations.
I've used Simple Gallery Pro before but it's not very good.
Currently using Immich but that's not really a general photo app - it's got a narrow use case - so I still use the Google Photos app alongside it quite often.
Specific alternative recommendations that aren't malware welcome.
8 replies →
> or even uninstall it
Unfortunately google's camera app will only open google photos if you click the image preview after taking one. Just doesn't respect the default gallery app setting at all.
I don't think Android does that. It's only Google Photo and only if you upload them to the cloud, if you don't sync/upload them, you can't search them with specific terms.
Samsung at least does these "dog" cataloguing & searches entirely on-device, as trivially checked by disabling all network connectivity and taking a picture. It may ping home for several other reasons, though.
Apple also does the vast majority of photo categorization on device, and has for years over multiple major releases. Foods, drinks, many types of animals including specific breeds, OCRing all text on the image even when massively distorted, etc.
This feature is some new "landmark" detection and it feels like it's a trial balloon or something as it simply makes zero sense unless what they are categorizing as landmarks is enormous. The example is always the Eiffel tower, but the data to identify most of the world's major landmarks is small relative to what the device can already detect, not to mention that such lookups don't even need photo identification and could instead (and actually already do and long have) use simple location data and nearby POIs for such metadata tagging.
The landmarks thing is the beginning, but I feel like they want it to be much more detailed. Like every piece of art, model of car, etc, including as they change with new releases, etc.
Does or doesn't. You can't really tell if and when it does any cataloguing; best I've managed to observe is that you can increase chances of it happening if you keep your phone plugged in to a charger for extended periods of time.
That's the problem with all those implementations: no feedback of any kind. No list of recognized tags. No information of what is or is to be processed. No nothing. Just magic that doesn't work.
With embeddings, there might not be tags to display. Instead of labeling the photo with a tag of “dog”, it might just check whether the embedding of each photo is within some vector distance of the embedding of your search text.
1 reply →
The "memories" part can be trivially done locally and probably is, it's really just reading the picture's "date taken", so it's conceptually as easy as a "sort by date". My old Android with whatever Photos app came with it (not Google's) shows this despite being disconnected for so long.
There's nothing stopping either Apple or Google from giving users an option to just disable these connected features, globally or per-app. Just allow a "no cloud services" toggle switch in the Photos app, get the warning that $FEATURES will stop working, and be done.
I know why Google isn't doing this, they're definitely monetizing every bit of that analyzed content. Not really sure about Apple though, might be that they consider their setup with HE as being on par with no cloud connectivity privacy wise.
"memories" constantly given me notifications about "similar shots" at random, so I'm assuming it is trying to analyse the content of the photos. I managed to disable the notifications, but not the actual analysis
> The "memories" part can be trivially done locally and probably is, it's really just reading the picture's "date taken", so it's conceptually as easy as a "sort by date".
It’s more. It also can create memories “trip to New York in 2020”, “Cityscapes in New York over the years”, or “Peter over the years” (with Peter being a person added to Photos)
No Android phone I've ever owned automatically uploaded your photos without asking. What exactly do you mean that it does too?
Uninstall Google photos and install a dumb photos app. I think most android phones don't even come with Google photos pre installed.
Dumb Photo App by Nefarious DataExfiltration Co & Son
Fossify gallery
This is what the "Allow Network permission" checkbox in the app installation dialog on GrapheneOS is for.
uninstall(disable) stock Google Photos app and install `gallery2.apk`. You can download one from sketchy github repos, or I think you can alternatively extract from Emulator image.
Why, install a non-sketchy open-source gallery app from F-Droid.