Google Photos will never cease uploading photos even after users uninstall the app on Android phones.
The Web giant's recently rebooted Photos app might be syncing photos with users realizing it. David Arnott, an editor at the Nashville Business Journal, who discovered this peculiarity had tried the app and then uninstalled it months ago.
Just recently, Arnott decided he wanted to give Google Photos another go, but much to his surprise after he reinstalled the app and signed in, he saw photos that had been uploaded after he deleted Google Photos from his phone, TechRadar noted.
"Instead of my pair of test photos, I saw hundreds of images. They weren't synced from my phone in that moment, because I always delete photos from my device once they've been uploaded," Arnott wrote.
My phone must have been uploading pictures to Google Photos even though I didn't even have Google Photos on my phone," he added.
Apparently deleting the Google Photos app from an Android device does not specifically switches off the Google Photos backup syncing feature. Those Android users who want to do the latter, have to know to access the Google setting page on their phone in order to toggle the backup function off.
Those who have deleted the Photos app and want to turn off backup on their Android device, can go to Google Settings, select Google Photos backup and toggle the switch at the top to off.
The search engine giant, Google told Arnott "the backup was as intended," and explained that syncing must be switched off in the settings in Google Play Services.
Another report from AndroidCentral notes that the Google Photos settings were "centralized" to the phone's setting app when the app was migrated out of Google Plus. "What happened to Mr. Arnott, and could happen to anyone who assumes that services are tied to a particular front-end, is that he uninstalled the Photos app but never turned off the backup component," it noted.
"Some users have uninstalled the Photos app on Android without realizing backup as an Android service is still enabled," Google said in a statement sent to PCMag.
This is something we are committed to resolving," the Web giant said.
"We are working to make the messaging clearer as well as provide users who uninstall the Photos app an easy way to also disable backup."
This is not the first slip up for the new app. Google was forced to apologize earlier this month after the service automatically tagged two people as gorillas.
