PhotoRecull

Repeat your Google Photos culls on your other copies: find and remove OneDrive and Synology Photos copies of photos you've already deleted from Google Photos.

🌐 Website: mykolad.github.io/photo-recull (setup and usage guides, privacy policy, terms of service)

Why

iPhone photos back up to Google Photos, iCloud, and OneDrive or a Synology NAS. Deleting a photo from Google Photos also removes it from iCloud (they sync), but OneDrive and Synology Photos keep their copy forever. Over years, they accumulate thousands of stale duplicates you already curated out of Google Photos. PhotoRecull finds them.

How it works

1. You select the photos you still have in Google Photos using the Google Photos Picker (opens in your browser, multi-select).
2. PhotoRecull scans your OneDrive or Synology Photos folder, identifies iPhone photos, and reads each one's capture time.
3. It matches those photos to Google photos by UTC timestamp (±2s, one-to-one — so a culled burst doesn't keep every frame).
4. iPhone photos with no match were deleted from Google Photos → they're flagged as removal candidates.
5. Review them in an HTML report, then stage (move for review) or delete.

Note: because of a 2025 Google API change, the whole-library read API is gone — you pick the surviving photos manually. See docs/SETUP.md.

Quick start

Prerequisites: .NET 10 SDK and a Google OAuth client — see docs/SETUP.md for the one-time Google Cloud setup and credentials.json.

Caching and the review report are automatic, so the normal flow needs no extra flags:

# 1. Dry run (the default) — pick surviving photos in the browser. Auto-saves the
#    pick and opens an HTML report to review. Prints the stage/delete commands.
dotnet run --project src/PhotoRecull.Cli -- --onedrive "<Camera Roll folder>" --from 2026-08 --to 2026-08

# 2. Stage the candidates for review (reuses the cached pick — no re-picking)
dotnet run --project src/PhotoRecull.Cli -- --onedrive "<Camera Roll folder>" --from 2026-08 --to 2026-08 --stage

# 3. Once you're happy with the staged folder, delete it yourself,
#    or re-run with --delete (permanent).

For Synology Photos, point at the mobile backup folder on the NAS instead (File Explorer must already be able to open it). Only that month's folders are read:

dotnet run --project src/PhotoRecull.Cli -- --target synology --path "\\nas\home\Photos\MobileBackup\iPhone" --from 2026-08 --to 2026-08

Add --stage "\\nas\home\PhotoRecull staged" to keep the staged photos on the NAS, outside the Photos folder that Synology Photos shows. See docs/USAGE.md.

Work one month at a time so the manual pick stays manageable, and prefer --dry-run/--stage over --delete.

Documentation

• docs/SETUP.md — Google Cloud / OAuth setup
• docs/USAGE.md — full command-line reference and workflows
• docs/STORE.md — packaging and publishing the Windows app to the Microsoft Store
• Website, with the privacy policy and terms of service

Repository layout

Folder	Contents
src/PhotoRecull.Core	Scanning, matching, the Google Photos Picker client, stage/delete, the cleanup library. Shared by every front end.
src/PhotoRecull.Cli	The command-line app, including the HTML review report
src/PhotoRecull.App	The Windows app (WinUI 3): setup, the Library, and a full cleanup for OneDrive and Synology Photos (pick, date range, scan, review, stage or delete); targets in Settings
tests/PhotoRecull.Tests	xUnit tests

To run the Windows app: dotnet run --project src/PhotoRecull.App. It keeps its settings, cleanups, picks and Google sign-in in a SQLite database, %LOCALAPPDATA%\PhotoRecull\photorecull.db. See docs/SETUP.md for giving it a built-in Google client.

Tests

dotnet test

The two sample images under tests/PhotoRecull.Tests/TestData/ are neutral stock photos stamped with only the EXIF the tests need (no location or personal data).

License

MIT — see LICENSE.