Dealing with Google Takeout in Mac OS

Overview

After July 2019, Google Photos will no longer sync with Google Drive. Whether or not this is a good thing depends on specific use cases. Regardless, it is happening and this impacts the way that I use Photos. Generally when I take photos on my Pixel 3 phone, I just let the system handle things. The phone syncs with Google Photos in the cloud. Google Photos syncs with Google Drive and Apple’s Time Machine backs up my Google Drive onto a local disk drive. I have been comfortable with this. I am not a heavy curator of my photos. I have some albums in Google Photos but generally I want my photos organized by creation date. This is important because the files that Google syncs to my Google Drive do not include the album folders or meta data. I’m ok with this.

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Downgrading the Nexus 7

After upgrading my Nexus 7 to Loliipop (5.0) I find that it is unusable due to lagging response times. I tried deleting the cache and other remedies I found online but nothing helped. It’s just too slow. I want to go back to KitKat (4.4.4). I found a few tutorials about downgrading that differ in a few details. Some are geared to Windows users, some are for Macs. For a number of reasons I want to do this on my Mac Mini. Continue reading “Downgrading the Nexus 7” →

Android File Transfer – Magic Begone!

I had installed the Android File Transfer app in order to make it easy to load music onto my Android phone. I didn’t realize that this app doesn’t behave like a typical Mac app. It includes an agent helper app, a daemon really, that gets started at login and monitors for Android USB connected devices. I was unaware of this for some time and generally it does not cause problems. However when I wanted to reflash my Nexus 7 tablet I ran into problems with the File Transfer Agent competing with the Android Platform Tools ADB program for control of the device.

My preference for utilities on my Mac is for them to not run until I activate them explicitly. Yes it looks swell to have a program pop up when I plug in the USB device, but I would prefer to manually launch it. I don’t like magic… Continue reading “Android File Transfer – Magic Begone!” →