How to ask for help, report issues or request new features

Ask for help or report issues

Google Photos has no live help. You can ask for help or report issues at the Google Photos Community, where experienced users try to help. Click here to find Google Photos Communities in several languages, as well as how to send feedback directly to the Google Photos team.

Look for answers first

• • Do some research: browse and search previous threads at the Google Photos Help Community. When searching there it also automatically searches the official Help pages.

  • If you find a thread where someone else is experiencing the same exact problem, please reply in the same thread (when not "locked"). Do not post your problem to every similar thread that you find, to avoid useless waste of time for you or the volunteer helpers.

Some things to try before asking for help

• • Reload the page (F5 in most browsers)

  • Restart your computer or device

  • Sign out and sign in to your account

  • Make sure you are signed into the correct account

  • Use a different browser to see if it is a browser-related issue

  • Clear browser cookies and cache: Chrome / Firefox / Internet Explorer / Edge / Vivaldi

  • Browse in Incognito mode (Chrome) / Private Browsing (Firefox) / InPrivate (Edge) etc

  • Disable extensions (various browsers); extensions (Chrome)

  • Disable add-ons / plug-ins (various browsers); Add-ons (Firefox)

Asking for help at the Google Photos Help Community

The Community is a user-to user forum where experienced users try to help others. Some volunteer helpers are officially recognized by Google, and are called Product Expert (PE).

Recommendations to make the help more efficient:

• When trying to help you, we often ask for more information. It's VERY IMPORTANT to provide all the necessary information especially when encountering an error or reporting a problem. The more information we have, the sooner we can offer help or workarounds.

• Post as much information as you can, but do not post email addresses or passwords

• • Please give us step-by-step directions whenever possible:

    • What were you doing when you experienced the issue?

    • A detailed description of the issue

    • Steps to reproduce the issue

    • What is expected to happen?

    • What actually happens?

    • The last time it worked as expected

  • Type out or copy the exact error message

  • What type of computer, browser, browser version are you using?

  • What device and model mobile device were you using (Android, iPhone, iPad, etc)?

  • Do you consistently experience the issue or just sometimes?

  • Provide links to example photos or albums

  • Insert a troublesome photo as an attachment to your post so it can be examined by our experts

  • Include screenshots of the problem (to be posted as attachment)

How to request new features

The Help Community is a user to user forum. PE's can escalate bugs that are signaled by several users in a short time, but Google asks to suggest new features by sending feedback. Do not expect a reply or any change soon (if ever): it's more like a tool for Google to find out what many users want.

Use correct terminology for reporting problems

• Upload = Transferring data from your computer/device to an Internet website (such as to Google Photos or Google Drive)

• Download = Transferring data from an Internet website to your computer or mobile device

• Import = Transferring data from a media device (such as a camera) to your computer

• Export = Transferring data from your computer to a media device or to a different folder on your computer.

• Media device = Memory card from a digital camera, flash drive (USB stick), Hard disk, CD / DVD