How to Delete Your Google Photos Account

It’s public knowledge that Google scans your Google Photos content to serve you ads that better match your interests. While some might accept that, others find that intrusive enough to want to take action.

Technically speaking, you cannot delete a Google Photos account, nor can you delete the Google Photos app from your device without losing all other Google account features. There are more details below. This setup is one way that Google remains in control of you!

Depending on the level of your concern, there are a couple of ways to resolve your Google Photos problem. But, before you proceed, it’s essential to pinpoint the reason why you may want to delete your Photos account in the first place. This step ensures that you don’t remove your Google Photos account if you don’t need to.

Why Delete Google Photos?

One of the common reasons people want to delete their Google Photos account is because they’re running out of storage space in the cloud. Deleting all their photos seems like an excellent way to solve this problem.

Another common and increasingly important reason relates to security and privacy. Many people don’t feel comfortable sharing their photos on a cloud storage service that hackers can attack and that Google can analyze to serve ads of interest, among other uses.

Why to Not Delete Google Photos

If space limits make you want to delete your Google Photos account, you can optimize it by changing Google Photo’s quality from “Original” to “Storage saver” (previously called “High quality.”)

If you don’t want Google Photos to receive images from your phone, turn off sync.

Suppose you like to use your phone’s Gallery app to manage your photos. In that case, you can remove Google Photos from your device entirely rather than delete the Google account from your phone, which would disable all other Google functions for the said account.

Deleting Google Photos Account on Device using Android

In this process, you are not removing the app but deleting your account from it. There is no way to remove an account from Photos altogether without losing everything else connected to Google. However, you can turn off sync, and any photos and images uploaded through Google Photos will remain in the cloud, but new ones won’t go there. Furthermore, you can delete Google Photos as long as no accounts are currently logged in, then you can use your phone’s default image viewer instead.

1. Launch the “Google Photos” Android app, then tap on your “profile icon” in the top-right section.
   
2. Select your currently active profile.
   
3. Choose “Use without an account.”
   

Upon completing the above steps, you have successfully removed your account from Google Photos, and it will become a standard offline image viewer for your Android phone unless you decide to uninstall it. Of course, your cloud remains if you ever want to view any stored images within your Google Photos account.

Deleting Google Photos Account on an iPhone

Like Android devices, iPhones also use Google Photos as an offline viewer when removing your Photos account, and any previously synced images remain on the app in the cloud. Since there is no way to delete your Google Photos account, you can detach it from the Google Photos app on your iPhone.

1. Open “Google Photos” on your iPhone.
2. Select your profile icon, which is found in the top-right section.
3. Choose your profile and tap on “Use without an account.”

Now, your Google account is not logged in to Photos, so the app serves as a simple offline image viewer. Take note that accounts still appear in Google Photos, but you are not logged into any of them, so you can uninstall the app if you’d like. Of course, your cloud remains if you ever want to view any stored images within your Google Photos account.

Deleting Google Photos App on a PC

The PC version of Google Photos is different than Android and iOS apps because it’s not an Android-based device. If you remove the app, your existing cloud-stored images remain in the cloud to view at any time. Furthermore, the PC app is actually Google Drive that offers Google Photos for image backups only. Therefore, deleting the app won’t delete cloud images, including the ones you synced through Windows.

1. Launch “Settings” from the “Windows Start Menu.”
   
2. Clkick on “Apps.”
   
3. Select “Google Drive,” then click on “Uninstall.”
   
4. Click “Uninstall” once more in the Windows confirmation popup.
   
5. Select “Uninstall” in the Google Drive popup window.
   
6. Click on “Close” in the Google Drive popup window once uninstall finishes.
   

Deleting your Google Account Entirely

There is no way to delete your Google Photos account completely, but you can delete the app from your devices, plus you can remove everything in it to help secure your privacy. The closest you get to erasing your Google Photos account is to delete all data in the cloud and remove all connected Google accounts.

Now that you know how to keep Google Photos in check, you can easily manage the level of your involvement with the service or remove your Google accounts from it. Although it’s nice to keep a backup of your photos somewhere in the cloud, you may disagree that Google Photos is the best service for the job. Besides, there are plenty of alternatives to explore.

Have you managed to set your Google Photos access to your liking? Which option works best for you? Please share your experiences in the comments section below.