Credit: Lucas Gouveia / Android Police
By
Sanuj Bhatia
Published Feb 3, 2026, 8:30 AM EST
Sanuj is a tech enthusiast with a passion for exploring smartphones, tablets, and smart wearables. He started his tech journey with a Lumia smartphone, diving into Windows Phone. Later, he switched to Android, enjoying tweaking and customizing ROMs.
Sanuj has been active in the tech industry since 2018, most recently working as Managing Editor at Pocketnow before joining Android Police. Prior to his time at Pocketnow, he contributed to publications such as Pocket-Lint, MakeUseOf, and Android Central.
When he's not doing tech, you'll find him chilling with chai, following football, and playing cricket. Feel free to reach out to him via Twitter DM or email at sanujb6 [at] gmail [dot] com.
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Google Photos is easily one of the most feature-packed gallery apps out there, but it's also one of the most overwhelming photo apps I have used on Android.
That is exactly why I've permanently switched to a simpler gallery app on my Google Pixel 10 Pro. I just found Google Photos to be too clunky for everyday use.
If you're in the same boat and feel that Google Photos tries to do a bit too much, but still cannot fully move away from it because of AI features like conversational photo editing, photo-to-video creation, or others, there's some good news.
Google Photos lets you turn off a bunch of unnecessary features and settings, which makes the app feel significantly lighter and easier to use.
Here are some of the most annoying Google Photos features and how you can turn them off.
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Posts 4 By Rajesh PandeyTurn off Quick Edit before sharing photos
Make sharing photos and videos from Google Photos faster
Google recently added a feature to the Photos app that lets you quickly edit an image before sharing it with other apps.
The feature allows you to make quick improvements like slightly boosting brightness, as well as basic edits such as crop and rotate before you share.
While the feature sounds useful in theory, many users, myself included, don't find it particularly helpful.
It adds an extra step before sharing, and most people already edit photos beforehand.
On top of that, apps like WhatsApp and Telegram already let you edit images before sending them.
Thankfully, there's an easy way to turn this off so you do not see the screen every time you share a photo.
You can disable it by going to the profile icon in the upper-right corner and then clicking Google Photos settings > Sharing > Quick edit before sharing and turning off the toggle.
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Posts By Rahul NaskarHide people you do not want to see in Memories
Remove specific faces so they stop appearing in highlights
One of the best features of Google Photos is Memories.
It's a curated selection of photos and videos from meaningful moments and appears as a carousel at the top of the main page, similar to Instagram Stories.
However, there may be times when you do not want specific people to appear in Memories, or want to hide memories featuring a particular person.
Google allows you to remove specific people from Memories.
You can do this by tapping your Profile icon and going to Photos settings > Preferences > Memories > Hide people & pets. Then select the people or pets you do not want to see.
While we are talking about Memories, if you're tired of getting too many Memories notifications and only want to view them inside the app, you can manage this as well.
Go to Google Photos settings > Preferences > Memories > Notifications, and then turn off specific notification types like Suggested, or disable all of them entirely.
Disable printing promotions and print suggestions
Get rid of prompts asking you to buy photo prints
In addition to storing and organizing your photos, Google Photos also offers a feature that lets you print photos and have them delivered to you.
Photo prints start as low as $0.18 per image, and you can order a full photo book starting at $14.99.
That said, not everyone uses this feature, and Google actively promotes it by sending frequent notifications about photo print options.
You can disable all photo print-related notifications in Google Photos if you prefer not to see them.
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If you do not want to receive these notifications, you can turn them off by tapping the profile icon in the upper-right corner, then going to Google Photos settings > Notifications.
From there, disable the three printing-related options: Printing promotions, Printing drafts, and Prints for you.
The printing service itself will still remain available to you. This simply stops those notifications from showing up.
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Posts 6 By Dhruv BhutaniStop videos from autoplaying in your Photos timeline
Scrolling feels calmer when videos do not play on their own
While Google Photos is a great way to view all your photos and videos in one place with a detailed timeline, it can be distracting when videos start autoplaying, even without audio, as you scroll through the feed.
This becomes especially annoying when you're trying to quickly find a specific photo, but the constant video playback keeps pulling your attention away.
You can easily disable video autoplay in the Google Photos home feed. Just tap the profile icon, go to Google Photos settings > Preferences > Photo grid playback, then turn off the toggle for Videos.
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Optionally, you can disable Motion photos if you do not want live photos to autoplay in the feed.
Stop photos from other apps showing in your main feed
Hide images from apps like WhatsApp so your feed stays clean
In addition to disabling video autoplay in the Google Photos feed, you can configure the app to show only photos and videos taken with your camera, while hiding screenshots and other clutter from the main feed.
You can do this by going to Google Photos settings > Preferences > Photos view and turning off the toggle for Show content from other apps.
Optionally, you can take this a step further by tapping Customize by app and disabling specific apps whose photos or videos you do not want appearing in the main feed.
Disable backup for junk and unnecessary folders
Avoid wasting cloud storage on screenshots and random files
Google Photos is arguably one of the easiest ways to store your photos and videos, even though you may eventually need to buy extra storage from Google.
Make Google Photos simpler — subscribe to the newsletter
Subscribe to the newsletter to access practical Google Photos settings and step-by-step tweaks that declutter your feed, stop autoplay, block printing prompts, and save cloud storage — plus clear app customization guides you can apply immediately. Subscribe By subscribing, you agree to receive newsletter and marketing emails, and accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe anytime.That said, it remains one of the most reliable ways to back up your photos and videos in case your phone breaks or, worse, gets stolen.
However, you do not always want every photo and video on your phone taking up valuable Google storage.
For me, folders like WhatsApp, Screenshots, and other similar directories are easy to skip, as I only want photos from my camera backed up.
Google lets you choose exactly which folders are included in your photo backups.
This can save a significant amount of storage space and help you manage your Google storage more efficiently.
To choose which folders are backed up, open the Google Photos app, tap Backup, then select the gear icon at the top.
From there, go to Back up device folders and disable the folders you don't want backed up.
Google Photos is great, but tweaking these settings made by experience even better
I may not be a big fan of Google Photos, but millions of Android users rely on the app daily.
While the default setup works well enough, disabling a few settings made a noticeable difference for me.
I also recommend checking out the changes I made to Google Chrome to make it a better browser for my own use.
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