Any previous camera photos GONE from A36

[Members_oeg8ogB]

I have a new A36 phone. I just tried to post a photo to a Facebook group from my phone (attached by USB) . I've done this many times with no problems but this time I couldn't find any of the photos in my camera gallery. The gallery appeared to be empty. I took another random photo and now that does appear in the gallery but none of my previous photos with this phone.

What could I have done to make them all disappear? How can I get them back? Thanks.

[realaud · Accepted solution]

I have two questions. First question, were you using Google's automatic backup?  This is on by default and you would have had to specifically turned it off for it not to back up your photos.  If you open Google Photos, are the pictures still there?  If they are not there, it brings me to my second question.  Did you delete any photos directly from Google Photos?  If you delete photos from the Google backup, it also deletes the photos from your phone.  If you delete photos from your gallery, they remain in Google photos.  If you were trying to save space in Google backup by deleting some backup photos, you were, in actuality, deleting the photos everywhere.  If you want to clean up Google Photos, it's best to move your Gallery photos onto a flash drive or computer before deleting anything from Google photos.  If the photos are in Google, you can re-download them to your phone.

[Members_oeg8ogB]

I just opened Google Photos on my PC, and the photos are all still there. How do I get them back into my A36 and make sure this doesn't happen again?. Might I have inadvertently changed a setting in my phone? 

[realaud]

You can open the Google photos app on the phone, select all the photos and choose "download". The photos will be copied to the gallery and also remain backed up in Google. I suggest just downloading them to the computer and just let any new photos get added to the gallery. Or, you can do both. You will still be able to acess the pictures in Google photos from your phone by opening the google photos app.

[Jules411]

I have the A36 also and haven't had any issues with uploading photos to Facebook or photos disappearing.

[Members_oeg8ogB]

Thanks all. My photos are still in the Gallery so I guess I'll just access them from that app on my phone.  Up til now, if I wanted to see a certain picture, I'd open the camera app, click on the little photo icon on the lower left then scroll through the pictures. Looks like viewing them via Google Photos or Gallery is a better way to go!

[MikenaB]

25 Ultra here. My gallery app did some sort of clean up and sent 99% of my photos into the abyss.

[realaud]

Look in Google Photos.  The Gallery app does not do an auto cleanup.  If your photos have not remained in Google, something may have happened with the Google servers, as when photos are deleted from Google's backup, they are deleted everywhere.  When deleted from the Gallery, they remain in Google.  This, of course, presupposes that you did not turn the Google backup off, as it's on by default.