PhotoRecull

Deleted it from Google Photos? Now it's gone from your other backups too.

Your iPhone backs up to Google Photos and to OneDrive, a NAS or another folder. You tidy up in Google Photos, but every photo you deleted there stays in your other copies. PhotoRecull finds them and clears them out, so your backups match the library you actually kept.

Coming soon to the Microsoft Store How it works

PhotoRecull's review timeline: photos deleted from Google Photos are dimmed and marked to remove, bursts are stacked
Every photo you deleted from Google Photos, dimmed and marked to remove, before anything happens.

Why not just do it by hand?

Because the same photo has a different name in every backup. Your iPhone and Google Photos call it one thing; OneDrive renames it after the moment it was taken, in UTC, to the millisecond; Synology Photos keeps the name but files it in a folder per month:

iPhone and Google PhotosIMG_4821.HEIC
OneDrive20261025_092323544_iOS.heic
Synology Photos2026\10\IMG_4821.HEIC

So there’s nothing to search for. Finding the copies of the photos you deleted means comparing capture times, photo by photo, across hundreds of photos a month. A burst is a dozen near-identical files, and a Live Photo is a photo and a video that must go together. PhotoRecull reads each photo’s capture time and matches it to Google Photos for you.

Why PhotoRecull

Your Google Photos cull, repeated

You pick the photos you kept in Google's own Photos Picker. Any copy in your other backups with no match is one you deleted, so it's marked to go.

You review everything first

A timeline shows every photo, newest first, with the ones to remove dimmed. Spot one you forgot to pick? Press Keep.

Safe by default

Stage first: candidates move to a review folder and nothing is deleted. Changed your mind? Move them back. Delete only when you're sure.

Bursts and Live Photos understood

A burst is one stack: keep your favourite frame and the rest go. A Live Photo's video always goes with its photo.

Any backup folder

OneDrive's Camera Roll, Synology Photos or another NAS, or any folder File Explorer can open, whichever app backs up to it. Add every one and clean them in one go.

Private by design

PhotoRecull runs on your PC. It uses only the capture time of the photos you pick, never downloads them, and has no servers or analytics.

An expanded burst: one frame stays, three go
Bursts open up so you can see which frame you kept.

How it works

  1. Pick. Choose a month and select the photos you still have in Google's Photos Picker, in your browser.
  2. Scan. PhotoRecull reads the capture time of each iPhone photo in your backup folders: OneDrive, a NAS, or any other.
  3. Review. Photos with no match were deleted from Google Photos. Check them in the timeline and keep anything you want.
  4. Clean up. Stage them to a review folder, or delete them.
PhotoRecull's Library: a year's coverage bar and a card for each cleanup
The Library shows which months are cleaned up, and how much space each cleanup freed.

Questions

Does PhotoRecull change anything in Google Photos? No. It only has read access to the photos you select in the Photos Picker, and of those it uses only the capture time. See the privacy policy.

What do I need? Windows 10 or 11, and iPhone photos backed up to Google Photos and to at least one other folder: OneDrive, a NAS such as Synology, or any folder File Explorer can open.

Can I undo it? Yes, if you stage first: photos move to a review folder and nothing is deleted, so you can move any back. In the Windows app, deleting from your PC sends photos to the Recycle Bin, unless Windows can’t recycle a file (say, it’s bigger than the Recycle Bin), in which case Windows asks before deleting it for good; the command-line version’s --delete is always permanent. Deleting from a NAS over the network skips the Windows Recycle Bin, so turn on the NAS’s own recycle bin for the shared folder first (on Synology: Control Panel › Shared Folder › Edit; on QNAP: Network Recycle Bin). PhotoRecull warns you before it deletes there, and looks for the recycle bin’s folder, but a folder only shows it was turned on once: check it still is.

What about photos from other phones or cameras? By default PhotoRecull only touches iPhone photos: an iPhone saves the time zone with its photos, so they match Google Photos exactly. You can turn that off for any folder to include other phones and cameras. A photo saved without its time zone (some cameras, older iPhones) stays whenever one of the photos you kept could be it, in any time zone, so a burst from such a camera stays whole when you kept one frame. It’s only removed when none of the photos you kept could be it.

Is it open source? Yes, under the MIT License. There’s also a command-line version. See Open source.

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