Can’t Delete Pictures From Gallery On Samsung Galaxy Note 2 [Answered]

Samsung Galaxy Note 2’s stock gallery app is a good photo manager. Among its basic functions are stocking up photos in an orderly manner, create thumbnails, view pictures depending on user’s preferences and of course, delete them if the owner wishes so.

Deleting of photos are very easy yet there are a lot of people who find this operation so difficult to do not because the procedure is complicated but because deleted photos may still appear in the gallery moments after they have already been deleted, which is, of course, strange to many owners.

Well, we have received several emails describing this very same problem. If you are one of the people who is currently bugged by this issue, this post is for you. But don’t worry, it’s nothing serious.

Understanding the Problem

Before anything else, there is some information you need to know about your Android phone. When you take photos using your phone, the gallery app will manage the output. All pictures will be store locally and can be viewed by either navigating to your phone’s internal storage or microSD card or by launching the gallery app.

When your phone is connected to the internet and syncs are on, the photos will automatically be synced to your Google Plus or Picasa accounts (both are Google products). So, there would be multiple copies of your photos. When you delete any photo using the gallery app and the sync is on, copies stored in the cloud will be synced to your phone that is why even when you successfully deleted a picture, it would appear as though the deleted item return.

Solution to the Problem

Using your common sense, you can solve this problem and you don’t even need to have a tech-savvy brain to do this.

1. Disconnect your phone from the internet or turn off all syncs.
2. Delete photos you want to get rid of.
3. Using your computer, log into your Google account and go to Google Plus or Picasa.
4. Delete photos you want deleted from Google + and Picasa.
5. From your phone, launch the gallery app and see if the picture you deleted would appear again.
6. If it does then it could be just the cache so you need to clear Gallery’s cache by going to application manager under Settings.
7. If clearing the cache won’t solve the problem, then proceed with clearing the data.
8. Once you deleted the photo from the Gallery, Google + or Picasa, you can turn the syncs back on.

This simple procedure would surely solve problems related to pictures coming back of the gallery app on the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 or any android device. I hope this helps.

To people who may have some insights on other ways to solve this issue, feel free to contact us.

Tell us your phone problems

The solutions we provided here are based on reports and testimonies from owners who have encountered these problems. I also ask my XDA developer friends regarding some of the problems. Now if you have other problems or questions with your smartphone that you want answered, don’t hesitate to send us email at [email protected].

We don’t guarantee a reply to all emails because we receive hundreds of them daily, but rest assured your email messages will be read by me. But I urge you to provide as much details as possible so I could easily find references and compare your problems with reports from other owners. If your problem is as common as others, there could already be solutions that exist and I would surely point you to them. Screenshots often help so attach one if you can.