Saving old photos digitally typically keeps their quality safer than storing photo prints in a drawer – or so you’d think.
A Google Photos bug on Android and iOS is apparently ruining photos that date back more than five years on the Google Photos app, Reddit users and commenters on the Google Photo Help thread said over the weekend.
The old uploaded photos had marks that resembled water damage on physical photos such as blurriness, cracks, and lines, Phone Arena reported.
The damage is only visible on edited versions of the photos, not the original, according to the outlet.
Reddit user mundeth uploaded an eight-year-old photo of a cathedral that displays unusual cracks, and other Reddit users responded to say the same thing was happening to them.
“I’m glad it’s not just me! I have the same issue, seems to be random and on photos that were uploaded years ago,” said bfmaster.
On the Google Photos Help thread, users reported similar photo issues.
“Older photos in my drive have started becoming corrupted. Issue looks like a water stain with massive discoloration and data loss. Is there any way to revert this?,” said Scott Miller 8444 along with damaged photos of adorable dogs.
“Discovered was [sic] something Google ABSOLUTELY needs to investigate ASAP!,” Kerry C said.
Google said they were working on the glitch.
“We’re aware of the issue and are rolling out a fix. The original photos are not impacted,” Google said on Monday.
Some users on the Google Photo Help page said the issue seemed to be resolved – sort of.
“I just checked and it looks like it’s fixed BUT it also looks that several of the bad pictures have disappeared completely!!,” wrote Daniel Palmans.
Hopefully, the issue will be completely fixed in a snap.