Recover photos from Google Photos cache About two months ago (just over 60 days so they are no longer in Trash), I manually deleted thousands of photos off my Google Photos account due a problem I had with duplicate files. I had a back up of all the photos on SD cards which I needed to clear. I moved the photos to an external hard drive. Later, I discovered that Windows had somehow decided to not copy about 1600 of the files.

The only trace I have left of the missing photos are the cached images on Google Photos on a broken android phone (LG G3) which I've turned on without any access to the internet. Even if they are low quality, I am desperate to recover these photos. Does anyone know how to access the cached photos (or thumb nails) of Google Photos?

My plan, if I can access them, is to create a wifi hotspot with another android phone without access to the internet and use something like airdroid to move the images to a computer. I could also maybe put an SD card back in the phone and move the files there instead?

The phone is not rooted. I've looked around using the file manager but have not been able to locate them. Does anyone have any suggestions?
You're best option is to try recovery software such as Recuva or EaseUS Data Recovery on one on the SD cards which once contained the deleted photos. The chances of recovering your data this way are slim, as even just a few missing kilobytes can corrupt whole photos and videos.

Android stores cached images in the following locations:


  /sdcard/DCIM/.thumbnails
  /data/data/com.google.android.apps.photos


If you're not rooted, then refer to this guide on how to use ADB to pull the data from the Google Photos application.

If all else fails, then your last two options would be to try contacting Google Support to see if they still have the files on their servers. Hardware data recovery could restore your photos at a price.