How to force Google Photos to sync photos to the cloud?

Question

I just took a picture with my phone and a few seconds later I refreshed Google Photos on my computer and the picture was there. But then I took a second picture and five minutes of refreshing later the picture is still not there! This has basically ruined what I was trying to do, as I was relying on being able to quickly download pictures between shots.



I was on WiFi the whole time. There was less than one minute between the first and second picture. I don't see any indications that anything is uploading or that anything failed. I have looked in both the Google Photos app and the web site looking for anything to force a sync and haven't found anything except for "Back up all" which did nothing.



How can I force my phone to sync to the cloud immediately? In the Photos app the new image already appears, but on my PC only the first picture I took showed up.


— Michael | Sources

Answer

Here is what I have found to work most reliably on my phone, which is a stock (not rooted) Samsung Galaxy Note 8 (Android version 9). I found this out via other posts on stack exchange, but I forget where.



After I take a series of photos on my phone using its camera app, I switch over to the Google photos app, and inside that app I select one or more of the photos and create a shared album. That is not enough to sync to the cloud however. To force the phone to sync and upload all the files to cloud, you have to actually share it, or just click on the create link icon. In order for that to work, it forces the phone to have to upload all of the selected photos into Google photos. This works out just fine for me, because I usually want to get a share link to the items that I am taking a record of, anyway


— bgoodr | Sources

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