By Jade Bryan Jardinico
Publication Date: 2026-08-15 11:00:00
I have been a faithful Google Photos user for over a decade, even dating back to before it was spun off from Google+.
Over that span, I’ve accumulated tens of thousands of photos and videos across my devices.
On paper, having an endless archive of my memories sounds fantastic. But in practice, it turned my library into a chaotic mess with screenshots and miscellaneous items mixed in with personal photos.
Filtering out the noise to find specific people or events becomes a chore, and is even made worse by Google’s unpredictable in-app search updates.
I needed to clear the decks on my end, and I decluttered my gallery using a combination of targeted tweaks in Google Photos.
