How to Turn off Google Photos Sync on Mobile & Desktop

• User Case
• Reasons for Turning off Google Photos Sync
• Turn off Google Photos Sync on Mobile
• Turn off Google Photos Sync on Desktop
• Bonus Tip: Upload Photos to Google Photos with Better Controlling
• Conclusion

User Case

Reasons for Turning off Google Photos Sync

Google Photos is a cloud-based photo and video storage service developed by Google. It allows you to store, organize, and share your digital photos and videos across various devices. The Google Photos auto backup (or sync) is one of its features. When you enable this feature, your photos and videos will be automatically synced from your device to Google Photos. While this feature is great for preventing data loss, there are times when it seems unnecessary:

Turn off Google Photos Sync on Mobile

Whether you are using iPhone, iPad, or Android, you can follow the steps below to unsync Google Photos on your devices.

Step 1: Open Google Photos on your device.

Step 2: Click on your profile and choose “Photos settings” in the dropdown menu.

Step 3: Select “Backup” to enter the backup settings. Then, toggle the button beside “Backup” to stop Google Photos from syncing your device photos.

Step 1: Go to Google Photos and click on your profile.

Step 2: Tap the downward arrow next to your name and choose “Manage accounts on this device”.

Step 3: Click the “Remove from this device” under your account to disconnect your device from your Google Photos account.

Turn off Google Photos Sync on Desktop

To stop Google Photos from auto-syncing photos on your computer, we will use the Google Drive desktop app. The specific steps are shown as follows.

Step 1: Open the Google Drive desktop by clicking the icon in the taskbar.

Step 2: Click the gear icon in the upper-right corner and choose “Preferences” in the dropdown menu.

Step 3: Choose the folder you do not want to sync to Google Photos and click “Select folder”.

Step 4: Uncheck the “Back up to Google Photos” option in the pop-up window of “Settings” and tap on the “Done” button to turn off auto backup on Google Photos. Then, photos in this folder will not be synced with Google Photos. If you want to turn off Google Photos syncing other folders, repeat the operations for times.

Bonus Tip: Upload Photos to Google Photos with Better Controlling

After you turn off Google Photos sync, photos on your iPhone will not be synced to Google Photos. If you want to save some photos to Google Photos, you can manually upload them on the Google Photos website. However, there is another way that you can upload photos to Google Photos – use MultCloud. MultCloud is a cloud management service and you can add 30+ clouds to it, including Google Photos.

To use MultCloud, you will first go to its website and sign up for a new account.

Then, you will click “Add Cloud” in the left sidebar and select the Google Photos icon. Then, log into your Google Photos account and allow MultCloud to access it.

After adding Google Photos, you can see it in the left sidebar under “My Online Services”. Click Google Photos and select the folder to which you want to upload photos. Then, click “Upload File” and choose photos on your computer to upload.

Apart from the upload function, MultCloud can also help you do the cloud-to-cloud transfer/sync/backup. For example, if you want to sync iCloud Photos with Google Photos, you can take advantage of the Cloud Sync function to create a real-time syncing task.

Conclusion

To turn off Google Photos sync, you can stop auto-backup or remove your Google Photos account on mobile. While on the desktop, you can select the folder and let Google Photos not sync the photos in the folder. Try the methods above according to your needs.

What’s more, if you want to upload photos to Google Photos in another way or transfer/sync/backup files between Google Photos and another cloud, using MultCloud will be a good choice. You can manage your multiple cloud drives in one place with different robust functions there.