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I've got 40GB of photos from my old Picasa Web Albums service and now I've just cancelled my storage plan.

Is there any way to remove all the photos and albums?

I searched a lot and I have no clue how to do it, I'm not going to delete near 400 albums individually, and obviously, not paying again for the storage plan.

I remember old days when google-cli was able to do this kind of stuff, but sadly it seems abandoned.

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  • Log into your Google Drive account in a browser and delete the folders which contain the photos
    – Ramhound
    Jul 20, 2016 at 19:23
  • Thanks for your comment @Ramhound There's no photos folder in Drive. Photos tab appears empty, but in Google Photos still appear the 40GB of photos. I can't find a way to select all albums in order to remove them.
    – mguellsegarra
    Jul 21, 2016 at 7:41
  • Is your end goal to make sure Google Photos doesn't have a copy of your photos anymore, or are you concerned about them counting towards your storage quota? If you convert your photos to High quality, they no longer count towards your storage quota. goo.gl/YNd715
    – Folk
    Jul 22, 2016 at 20:36
  • Thanks for your comment again @Folk. I don´t want Google having my photos anymore, and also, I want to continue using Gmail and other services. If I don´t find a way to clear them all, I suppose I will apply your solution and I'll convert photos to high quality. But also I'll continue to actively search a way to fix this lack of basic privacy features from Google Photos.
    – mguellsegarra
    Jul 23, 2016 at 10:03
  • Try changing Browser Zoom to 50% or even 25% on larger monitor, and doing the SHIFT + MOUSE select of multiple files, multiple times. Saves a lot of (mouse wheel) scrolling. Scrolling (mouse wheel) too much, too far, didn't seem to work however. The standard, normal scroll bar is hidden for me and in place is the normally, nice, handy Date scroller. I mucked around with CSS said Date scroller and show normal vertical scroll bar, but clicking the normal scroll bar messed with SHIFT + MOUSE multiple select... so use the mouse wheel with browser zoomed.
    – Cymatical
    Apr 27, 2020 at 20:24

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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  1. In a browser go to photos.google.com
  2. Select Photos from the left side menu
  3. Hover over your first photo and then click the checkmark that appears to select it
  4. Grab the scroll bar on the right and go all the way down to your last photo
  5. Holding down the Shift key select the last photo in the bottom right
  6. Click the Trashcan icon

I tested all of the steps except the last one as I don't actually want to delete all my photos. :)

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  • 1
    Thank you @Folk for you answer. Your solution will work if you have fewer photos, but in my case it's not working. When I select the first photo and then scroll down back to photos from 2002, it seems that the web app clears up the first photo selected and invalidates the selection. Also I tried to scroll down slowly in order to gradually add more photos to the selection, but then if you try to remove them with the trash can, an error shows up telling that only 1500 photos are allowed to be removed at once. I've got +15.000 photos, so... poor me!
    – mguellsegarra
    Jul 23, 2016 at 10:00
  • I'm hopeful someone can answer this eventually. I'm in the same boat.
    – AMM
    Jul 31, 2016 at 6:16
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    @mguellsegarra - Based on your comment, it sounds like this will work but you'll have to do it 10 times instead of just once. ( 15,000 photos divided by 1,500 photos per try should be 10 tries to completely delete all of them.)
    – Folk
    Aug 1, 2016 at 19:04
  • Yes, that's just what I've done, sadly I didn't find any other way to do it. So @AMM, good luck and take it easy :)
    – mguellsegarra
    Aug 1, 2016 at 19:13
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    @mguellsegarra Glad you were able to remove them, even if it wasn't the easiest method. If you could mark my answer has having addressed your question, I would appreciate the points. :)
    – Folk
    Aug 1, 2016 at 19:20
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I used this JS Script: https://github.com/mrishab/google-photos-delete-tool/

I had trouble with using the selected answer. I had over 10k images and scrolling with speed won't let me use the shift and select option.

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  • Interesting! I wasn't aware of this tool so I wrote one of my own, maybe it would help someone: ddorda.net/archives/1872
    – Ddorda
    Apr 17, 2020 at 22:45
  • Mixed results here for the script. Seems to do the job, but in small batches, and oddly, # of selected (via js script in Chrome devtools console) and # of deleted photos (Google Photos server response) are not the same. Gave it up after 20 minutes. Skills in JS/CSS might resolve.
    – Cymatical
    Apr 27, 2020 at 20:08
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    @jan-glx, I merged existing PRs.
    – Rishab Manocha
    Oct 29, 2020 at 7:13
  • @Cymatical there have been some improvements in code and documentation. Could you give it a shot in case you still need it?
    – Rishab Manocha
    Oct 29, 2020 at 7:14
  • Looks like you greatly improved it recently! Thanks!
    – jan-glx
    Oct 30, 2020 at 8:11
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I had too many photos. Ended up going into photo search, and choosing "Recently Added". Good thing they were all added in past 2 days, so I just selected "Added Today" and was able to delete 500 at a time.

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This is a very incomplete answer, but I'm posting it in the hopes that someone else may be able to build on it.

I opened Inspector in Firefox and used it to determine the class for the select-all-images-for-date checkbox, and then entered this in the console:

var a = document.getElementsByClassName("R4HkWb");
for(var i=0; i<a.length; i++) a[i].click();

It almost works, but it has some severe limitations:

  • It only selects images for dates that have more than one image. You have to go back and select images where the date has only one image.
  • It only selects images for dates that are currently visible, so you have to repeat the command as you scroll down the page.
  • I don't know how permanent that class is, you may have to dig into the page with the inspector to find the new class if it changes.
  • If images in a date are already selected, running this command inverts the selection, deselecting them.

Again, I'm not posting this as a complete answer, but as a partial answer that will hopefully get someone closer to a full solution.

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  • @Harm te Molder If you have a better answer, add your own answer instead of editing an existing one. Thanks. :)
    – Nathan Arthur
    Dec 23, 2018 at 16:40

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