Google Photos 20K Photos Album Limit Workaround

17 Oct 2025 / 2 min read
Google/ Photos

The Problem

Google Photos caps albums at 20,000 photos. For someone with a large photo library who shares albums with family, this is a problem.

Once you hit the limit, new photos stop being added automatically. I don’t usually keep track, so it can be a month or so till I realize the album wasn’t adding new photos.

Creating a new album only captures photos from that point forward—missing everything between the old album’s cutoff and the new one’s start.

The Workaround

This workaround is useful if you want to create a new album and auto add photos that carry on from the previous album.

Using the Google Photos web app:

  1. Create a new album
  2. Click the 3 dots menu on the top right corner > Options > Automatically add photos (For some reason it doesnt work if you clicked “Select people & pets” from the main empty album screen)
  3. Select people & pets > select the person > Toggle “Also add existing photos”
  4. Leave it to add for a short while.
  • Don’t leave it auto adding too long, the UI takes some time to update and on the backend it already added more photos.
  • For me I just leave it running for 10-20s, but ymmv.
  • Last thing you want is to end up with 15k or 20K past photos added and the UI updating the count 10 mins later, so it’s best to stop earlier and readd it again.
  1. Options > Click the person > Stop auto-adding photos of this face
  2. Options > Re-add the face > Make sure “Also add existing photos” is unchecked

Google please do better!

Writing this so I can remember every half a year when I need to create a new album.

But seriously, Google, Photos is an incredibly useful product, but please make it easier to manage these auto adding albums or adjust the 20K limit!

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© Zixian Chen