chrispirillo

Just $200 total. Can't believe I lucked into this. Will be going through the bins tonight! Quite a few gems on the surface.

I’m running into an incredibly frustrating issue with my OnePlus 15 (latest OxygenOS 16.0.5 build) and Google Photos backups, and I’m hoping someone here might have found a permanent solution because my workaround is tedious.

The problem: Google Photos is prematurely backing up the low-resolution, temporary "placeholder" image that the camera app saves immediately after pressing the shutter, rather than waiting for the final, post-processed high-resolution image.

The photos look perfect in the local OnePlus Gallery app. However, if I check Google Photos on the web, I only have the inferior, low-res versions backed up.

Because Google Photos indexes by filename, once it grabs that garbage low-res version, it refuses to update it with the final high-res version, even after OxygenOS finishes processing and overwrites the local file. The only way to get the real photo into the cloud is a manual, tedious process.

It seems OxygenOS’s heavy post-processing and AI enhancements are taking a moment to finalize. The camera drops a quick temp file so you see something in your camera roll right away, and Google Photos grabs it the exact second it hits the folder.

Here is everything I have attempted so far, so please don't suggest these unless I missed a step:

1. Disabling Background Data for Google Photos: I turned off background data for the Google Photos app, hoping it would only back up when I opened the app (giving the OS time to finish processing). Result: Google Photos uses "eventual consistency" and just preps the backup and fires it off anyway. It didn't stop the premature grab.

2. The .nomedia Trick: I tried adding a .nomedia file to the main camera folder to force Google Photos to ignore it, with the intention of manually moving the finished photos to a separate backup folder. Result: Terribly tedious. I have to manage files like it's 2010 just to get a clean backup.

3. Editing to Force an Update: If I make a slight edit to the final photo in the OnePlus Gallery (like a tiny crop), it saves as a new file, and Google Photos will finally back up the high-res version. Result: I'm not doing this for every single photo I take.

4. Turning off Automatic Backups: This is my current "fix." I disabled auto-backup entirely. I just use the OnePlus Gallery for daily viewing, and then periodically go into Google Photos and manually trigger the backup once I know all files have finished processing. Result: It defeats the entire purpose of having seamless cloud backups.

Has anyone found a real fix for this? Is there a setting hidden deep in the camera app or developer options to stop it from writing the temp file, or a way to force Google Photos to delay its scan by 30 seconds? Or something else I'm missing? This seems to have been a long-standing bug according to the research I did (with no viable solution in sight).

Any help is appreciated!

I have done everything I can possibly think of to rectify the problem, but no matter what I do... the camera app (when recording video of any quality, any orientation) cuts off video recording about 40 seconds into it. Is this happening to anyone else? If so, did you find a way to correct the problem?