Turning On Google Photos, Step by Step
Okay so this is the lesson where we actually do the thing, same as we did with iCloud last time, except now it's your Android folks who get to feel useful. Phones out, chargers in. Actually plug in even if your battery's fine. This can chew through some power the first time and I don't want anyone dying at 60% halfway through.
If you're on an iPhone and you want to use Google Photos instead of iCloud, that works too. You'll just download the app from the App Store first. Android folks, it should already be sitting on your phone somewhere, probably in a folder with a bunch of other Google apps you've never opened.
Let's go.
Step 1: Open the Google Photos app
Look for the little pinwheel icon, it's white with red, green, yellow, and blue on it. Tap it.
If it asks you to sign into a Google account, use the same one you use for Gmail if you've got one. If you don't have a Google account yet, that's fine, you can make one right there, it just takes a couple extra minutes. Ask the person next to you for help if the screen's asking you things that don't make sense yet. That's normal.
Step 2: Find your account picture, top right corner
Tap on it. This is the same move as always with these apps, your little circle photo or your initial in a colored circle, tucked in the corner. Tap it and a menu drops down.
Step 3: Tap "Photos settings"
Sooo, on some phones this says "Photos settings," on some it just says "Settings." Same thing. Tap it.
Step 4: Tap "Back up"
This is the one. It might say "Back up & sync" depending on your phone. Tap into it.
Step 5: Turn the toggle on
There should be a switch, and when you tap it, it turns blue or green depending on your phone. That's it turning on. You'll probably see a little spinning circle start up almost right away, that's your phone starting to upload.
Step 6: Check your backup quality setting
While you're in there, there's usually an option for "Backup quality" or "Upload size." I feel like people skip right past this one and it matters. You'll see something like "Storage saver" and "Original quality." Original quality uses your actual full-size photo and eats your storage faster. Storage saver compresses things a little. For most people's phone snapshots, storage saver is totally fine, honestly you probably can't tell the difference on a phone screen. If you're someone who takes photos you'd want printed big someday, go with original.
Step 7: Watch it start climbing
Same as with iCloud, you'll see a number, something like "1,204 of 8,700 backed up," and it'll climb while you sit there. Don't panic if it's slow. Some of you are going to have thousands of photos and this could take a while, especially on the wifi here tonight with this whole room doing it at once. That's fine. Let it run in the background and just go about your evening.
Now here's the part I always bring up, and I'm going to bring it up again because I think it matters more than people think it does. Years ago I lost a whole batch of my son Jackson's kindergarten pictures. His actual kindergarten year, gone. The phone just died on me, no backup, and that was that. I still think about it. I bring this up out loud in every single class I teach because I want people to feel the weight of it a little, not in a scary way, just, that's a real thing that happens and it happened to me and I wasn't even careless about it. I just didn't have a system yet. So this step you just did, this little toggle, that's the whole point of the class. That's the thing that keeps that from happening to you.
A note on the "everything the phone considers a photo" problem
Same warning as with iCloud, maybe more so with Google Photos honestly. It's going to back up screenshots, memes, that photo of a receipt you took for your taxes, all of it, right alongside your actual pictures of your kids. This is my one small hill I will die on in this whole class: screenshots are not photos and they should not live with your photos. We're not fixing that today. Today is just get the backup running. We'll deal with sorting all that out in a couple weeks.
If you're not sure it's working
Go back into the app, tap your account circle again, tap "Photos settings," tap "Back up," and just look for the toggle. If it's on and colored in, you're backing up. If you see the number of backed-up photos sitting there not moving for a long time, check that you're on wifi, cellular data can slow this whole thing to a crawl or your phone might be set to only back up on wifi anyway.
And if something's genuinely stuck, holler at me or holler at the person next to you. I feel like someone in this room always knows the Android side better than I do, I'm an iPhone person if I'm honest with you, so don't be shy about asking around the table too.
Before next time
Let this run overnight at home on your wifi if it doesn't finish tonight, and don't touch your photo app to start deleting or organizing anything yet. We're doing that in a couple weeks. Right now the only job is to get the safety net on.