Want to automatically backup all of the photos you snap with your smartphone camera to the cloud? There are a few ways to do that. Apple has iCloud, and Dropbox, Amazon, and Google all offer apps for Android an iOS that will backup your photos.

But Google’s solution is a bit odd… because it requires you to use the Google+ social network.

Soon you might not need to do that though. The folks at Android Police dissected the latest version of the Google Drive app for Android and discovered code that suggests automatic photo backup might be coming to Google’s cloud storage service… no social networking required.

google drive logo

The move would make sense — Drive is Google’s online storage service and what you’re trying to do is store your photos online, after all. More importantly, there have been hints that Google would be removing Photos and Streams from Google+ and setting them up as standalone services.

While there’s code in the app which suggests Google Drive will be taking over the cloud photo backup responsibilities, there’s no telling when the change will happen… or even if it will happen. It’s always possible that the service will still need you to have a Google+ account… but hopefully it’ll be easier to make sure you don’t accidentally share all of your photos publicly when you meant to keep some private.

Android Police says it looks like Google is also working on bringing Chromecast support to Google Drive, which could let you stream photos or other media to a TV.

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5 replies on “Report: Google Drive app will offer cloud photo backup”

  1. Really, Apples average Cloud offering gets a mention, and one of the best around, OneDrive, doesn’t.

    Especially when it does Photo backup just as good if not better than pretty much everyone else.

  2. This is good news. Photo backup in G+ was okay, but I think it fits in much better with Google Drive. That is how Dropbox works, and it works well. I like OneDrive the best though, lots of storage and works on all the major platforms.

  3. This is just one completely obvious way that Drive on Android is badly crippled. If they synced camera photos to Drive instead of +, the photos from your camera would also automatically be backed up to your computer, and just appear there within a few minutes typically. The frustration with G+ is that the photos are only backed up to Google’s cloud, and then if you want them on other devices you have to go to + and manually find and download them individually . . . oy. AND if you also want them on your Android tablet or other device . . . you have to go and repeat the process on each of those devices.

    The other huge frustration with Drive on Android is that you can’t autosync a folder (which is supposed to be the whole point of Drive on the PC and in the Cloud – your docs 2 way synced automatically. You can only “Pin” files individually – totally crippled. Again, to enable this function you have to go with something like Auto Sync or FolderSync – third party apps. Google needs to make Drive do what it’s supposed to do.

    In fact I have just been experimenting with sync tools that will sync
    my Android camera photos to Drive, of which there are a number that work
    well. And they work generally with other folders as well. That’s fortunate, but Drive certainly ought to just have this
    functionality in the options.

    I have no problem with + or with Picasa or whatever – useful for what they are. (Sharing with others and organizing). For backing up, and distributing to your own devices – totally inadequate.

  4. Finally!
    I think photo management in the Drive would be better.
    I deeply hope Google will make the move. 🙂

  5. Drive has always been a great asset of Google’s, however it has always had a level of fragmentation that Dropbox never did. Docs -> Drive, Picasa is separate the entire time.
    If they could have had this as a one-stop-shop from the start, I’d use Drive for everything. As it stands, I only use it for random and spontaneous docs, nothing important

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