01Turning it on
Partial photo access is the trap on both platforms: the household believes it granted access while the backup quietly covers a subset. Widening the grant is step one of two, and it changes what can be seen rather than what gets backed up.
02Albums
The system decides what this app may read. The household decides what belongs in the family library. Screenshots and someone else’s shared album are visible and still off, because visible is not the same as wanted.
02Folders · Android
Android enumerates folders on disk rather than curated albums, so the list is the shape of the storage — and it includes folders other apps write into. Omar’s Pixel is the second device in this household, and these switches move its contribution.
03Backing up
One large number, and it is a count rather than a percentage. Turn videos off and watch the bytes collapse while the count barely moves — video is most of the weight and almost none of the items.
04The library
Every tile carries two marks, because stored and understood finish days apart. The box copies bytes in minutes; the local model reads them whenever the graphics card is free.
05One photo · two verbs
Freeing space on the phone is the most common reason anyone deletes a photo, and a backup that follows them is worse than none. So the two actions never look alike and never sit adjacent.
06The desktop app
The window holds the household's identity and the destination at once, which is why the desktop shows what every device contributed, imports this computer's own folders, and owns the question of whose storage the bytes actually sit in.