Google Photosis a great service. It was the first to truly make it easy to find images in your library and offered a straight-forward way to walk down the memory lane. Google has started monetizing its excellent tool more aggressively in recent years with a prominent printing service link, no more free storage, and exclusiveGoogle Oneand Pixel features. The company has added one more way to pester you to turn on certain features: A persistent banner at the top of the Photos home page.
The banner shows up right below the header, reading “Unlock the power of Google Photos: Get more out of your memories.” It’s accompanied by a scary-looking exclamation point and an arrow, indicating that it’s actionable.
When you tap the banner, you’re taken to a setup screen that says “You’re almost done,” complete with a progress bar. Below it, three actions are listed for turning on backup, allowing notifications, and signing in with your Google account. If you don’t want to fulfill all of these steps for whatever reason, you can hit the back button, but the banner in the Google Photos home page will stay visible whenever you open the app.
It’s not clear what the intention is behind this change. Not everyone wants to back up their photos or turn on notifications, and Google should respect that. It makes sense to give people an occasional reminder to turn on these arguably useful features, but once people acknowledge the banner and then still decide to not pull through, they should be left to use the service the way they please.
How to get rid of the Google Photos banner even if you don’t want to turn on notifications
There is a workaround if you just want to keep notifications disabled. Long-press the Google Photos app on your home screen and head to the app info screen. Here, go toPermissions → Notificationsand fliponthe switch (bear with me). You’ll then see different groups of notification channels. Deactivate all the toggles you’re able to find, effectively only leaving theAll notificationstoggle at the top turned on. When you start Google Photos, the nagging banner at the top should be gone.
There is likely not a simple solution like this if you don’t want to back up your images to Google Photos, though. We can only hope that Google reconsiders this persistent banner. Adding a “No thanks” option that dismisses the banner would suffice, and make the experience much more user-friendly.
