Google Photos may have corrupted some of your older images, but likely no need to panic yet

Google promotes its Photos app as “the home of your memories.” And we can all agree that it is indeed a very useful service. For example, you can upload your “memories” to Google’s servers and access them on all of your devices.

However, while you are browsing your pictures in the Photos app and reminiscing about the old days, you might want to check your photos uploaded between 2013 and 2015. Why? Well, it turns out that they might appear with some issues.

As the folks from 9to5Google (via Android Police) noticed, many Photos users have shared on Reddit and the Google Support forums that some of their pictures uploaded between 2013 and 2015 appear corrupted, plagued by random lines and dots in black or white. It is like the photos are missing some of their data.

A possible bug in the transfer process from Google’s servers to the Google Photos app might be causing some of the images to lose pixels. However, it looks like the pictures stored on the servers are uncorrupted, so don’t panic, your memories are most likely intact. Google has yet to issue a statement on the matter.

We should note that the problem has been fixed for some people, but if you are still experiencing it, you can try to clean the cache of the Photos app and open the affected images again. This may resolve the issue, as it has for many people.

To clear Photos’s app cache on Android, go to: Settings > Apps > Photos > Storage > Clear Cache. To do the same on an iPhone, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Photos > Offload App.