Images from 2013 to 2015 seem to be affected, but there seems to be a fix
Google Photos is an amazing tool for keeping your digital memories safe, and there are plenty of tips and tricks to get the most out of it. At least, that’s what you’d expect from a service that promises to curate your images for you, with machine learning tools that make sorting through your library easier. Some people are having issues with older images uploaded to the service, with digital artifacts tearing up the images.
As Android Police founder Artem Russakovskii noticed, a few people took to Google’s support forums and Reddit to complain about the issue. Reports began to appear about two days ago, and all of the images involved share similar damage. There are seemingly random lines and dots of missing pixels, replaced by random black or white pixels. Most of these artifacts form random lines, as if data were just missing for a few points on the photos. The shapes and forms created this way look almost artistic, but of course that’s probably not what you want your treasured memories to look like.
Be sure to view these full-size images to better spot artifacts
It appears that many of the affected images were uploaded between 2013 and 2015, with some of the reports specifying the period from May 2013 to May 2015.
How to Fix Corrupt Google Photos Images
The good news is that the issues have already been resolved automatically for some people. For their part, they can no longer see the artifacts.
Others who weren’t lucky enough to get automatic processing were able to get rid of artifacts by clearing the cache of the Photos app and re-opening the affected images, then seeing error-free versions.
So, it looks like Google still has the original images on their servers. It’s possible that there are only a few glitches in the process of transferring servers to the Google Photos app, with individual pixels not arriving on phones and the Google Photos web app for some. If so, we should be good and the images should remain safely stored in their original (or slightly compressed) version.
Either way, it’s a good idea not to rely on Google Photos as the only place to save your precious memories. This goes for all cloud storage solutions for all your data, not just photos, unrelated to this incident. In our guide to permanently deleting your Google account, we have a section that explains how you can export your data (and therefore your photos) from your account to create a local copy. Personally, I make an updated copy every three months or so, just so my data is available both locally and online in case something goes wrong.
We’ve reached out to Google to comment on the Google Photos issue.