How to Remove an Account from Google Photos

Even though technology makes our lives easier, it gets on our nerves. This is true when it comes to our personal belongings, such as photos. One such interesting but confusing application is Google Photos. Here we will tell you how to unlink your account from Google Photos on iPhone and Android.

Many users are surprised to see their gallery or Camera Roll images in the app the first time they use the Google Photos app. Since Google Photos is known to save images to the cloud, it’s clear that people may fear their photos are now being saved online. Worse still, if you have previously added some images to Google Photos from the web or from the app itself, they will automatically appear on your phone.

For the same reason, people may want to unlink their Google account. To remove an account, you need to understand how Google Photos works. So let’s start with that, then how to remove an account from Google Photos.

How Google Photos Works

Google Photos performs three basic functions. First, it acts as a gallery app on your phones, tablets, and iPad. So any photo you have on your device will show in the Google Photos app. Like other gallery apps, you can manage and organize your offline photos in the app.

However, it is somehow different from normal gallery apps. For starters, Google Photos lets you store your photos in the cloud. This feature works if you enable the backup feature in Google Photos settings. A Google account is required to back up data. So, unless enabled, Google Photos only acts as a gallery app. When enabled, all photos on your phone are synced to your Google account.

Fly: Google Photos shares its available storage quota of 15GB with other Google apps, but if you use the high quality setting instead of the original quality

Finally, it constantly syncs your photos across various connected devices. That is, any image or video found in the Google Photos cloud will be automatically synced to your phone on both Android and iOS.

How Accounts Work in Google Photos

For starters, Google Photos only works with Google accounts. However, you can also use it without an account – more on that below.

When you launch the app on your phone for the first time, you will notice that your Google account automatically appears in Google Photos. This happens if you use a Google account on your device. Now if you have multiple Google accounts, they will all be listed in the Photos app. And you are not signed in to any Google account, you will be prompted to sign in. You can do this or skip it.

By now you must be wondering if your images are uploading to all of your Google Photos accounts. Answer is no. The images you see in Google Photos are just the ones you have on your phone. The application will ask if you want to enable the backup function.

If you want to activate it, you will need to select the Google account. Once enabled, images will only be uploaded to that account. However, as mentioned earlier, any photos in your Google Photos account will appear in the Google Photos app. To view such images, you will need to change the account.

How to Unlink Google Photos

Now we come to the main question – how to remove an account from Google Photos.

The answer to this question is complex. First you have to ask yourself why you want to do this. Let’s check out the various situations and steps that may match your cause.

Case 1: Stop Uploading Photos to Google

If you are worried that your photos will be uploaded to the cloud, as explained above, this will only happen if you have the backup setting enabled. And if you did, you can turn off the setting without exiting the app. Then, no new photos are saved to the cloud. And existing photos are untouched.

Here are the steps:

Stage 1: Open the Google Photos app and tap the three-bar icon at the top. Select settings.

step 2: Tap on Backup & sync and turn off the toggle next to Backup & sync.

Case 2: Sign Out of Google Photos

If you are not satisfied with the online factor of Google Photos, you can sign out of it. However, if you have multiple Google accounts on your phone, you can’t sign out of just one account in Photos and keep the rest open. You will be logged out of all accounts. When you do this, pictures will stop uploading to Google if the feature is enabled and the synced photos will be removed from your phone, but not from Google Photos.

Here’s how to sign out of Google Photos on Android.

Note:

Stage 1: Tap the three-bar icon in the upper-left corner of the Google Photos app.

Step 2: Tap the small down arrow next to your name. Then tap on Use without account.

The Google Photos app will now function as a convenient offline gallery app. You should also try the lighter offline version of the Google Photos app known as Gallery Go.

Case 3: Remove Google Account Completely

Note:

In the latter case, you will still see Google accounts listed in the Google Photos app. You can tap any account to start using it.

However, if you want to delete the Google account from the Google Photos app, you have to remove it from your phone. By doing this, you will also log out of other Google applications such as Gmail, YouTube, Drive, Calendar. You will also lose all your synced data like phone contacts, files from other apps like Google Drive.

Note:

The steps are the same for both Android and iOS.

Stage 1: Open the Google Photos app. Tap the three-bar icon at the top. Then tap the small down arrow next to your email.

step 2: Select Manage accounts on this device.

Stage 3: On iPhone, tap the Remove from this device button located under your Google account.

On Android, tap on the Google account and then hit the Remove account button on the next screen.

Note:

Case 4: Switch Between Multiple Accounts

If you want to back up your photos to a different Google account, you must turn off backup on the first account and enable it on the second. Here’s how to do it.

Stage 1: Go to the Google Photos app Settings from the three-bar icon at the top.

Step 2: Tap on Backup & sync. Google Photos will show you the email ID the photos were uploaded to.

Stage 3: Turn off the toggle next to Backup and sync.

Step 4: Return to the home screen of the app and tap the icon with three bars. If the Google account is signed in, tap on , otherwise tap on Add another account.

Step 5: Tap the three-bar icon again after signing in with the new account. Then choose Settings.

Step 6: Tap on Backup & sync. Turn on the switch next to Backup and sync. Photos will now be uploaded to the new account.

Case 5: Sign Out of Google Photos on Other Devices

Finally, if you signed in to your Google account on someone else’s phone and forgot to sign out, your synced photos will appear in that person’s Google Photos app if they switch accounts. However, don’t worry. You can log out of Google Photos remotely. For this, you will need to unlink your Google account from the device.

When you do this, your friend’s phone will lose access to your Google Photos account. But this also works with Contacts, Calendar, Drive, YouTube etc. means you will also log out of other applications on that device, such as

To do this, follow the steps outlined below. They work on all devices like Android, iPhone and desktop.

Stage 1: Open the Google device activity link on your device. You will be asked to log in with your Google account. Use the account you want to sign out from the other device.

step 2: All your connected devices will be listed. Click on the device you want to unlink.

Stage 3: Click Sign out.

Fly:

Is it Safe to Sign Out?

Yup. Signing out of the Google Photos app on the phone does not delete the backed up data. Images and videos will continue to be available in Google Photos. You can view it on the web by visiting photos.google.com. Also, the data will reappear if you sign in to the Photos app again.

Next: Thinking of uninstalling the Google Photos app from your phone? Will your photos be deleted? Find the answer in our guide at the next link.