Infuriating Google Photos issue - any Android experts here?

[Tracy Island]

Earlier today, Google Photos suggested I "free up space" - I selected this option and it deleted all of the photos that were over a year old from my device. Fine, they're all backed up on the Google Photos cloud, but that's not much use when a 3g/4g or wifi connection isn't available.

There doesn't seem to be a way to properly restore them to my phone. I've downloaded them in a zip file, but when I paste them back in to the camera folder on my phone, Google Photos recognizes them as a new photo and they're all sorted under todays date, rather than organized by the day they were taken on. Does anyone have any ideas how to rectify this issue? I am absolutely seething

[xx99xx]

Don't know about you, but I can still access my Google photos library when not connected to internet.

[Corso Marche]

To be fair the messages displayed before and during the 'Free Up Space' process are pretty simple and self explanatory.

It's also unusual for most people to be away from 3G/4G/WiFi for extended periods of time where they'd want to access photos which are over 1 year old.

But anyway, the steps below will reinstate them on local storage for the G Photos app.

• Connect to decent WiFi
• Launch Google Photos on your phone
• Scroll to the photos you want to reinstate on local storage
• Tap each photo to open full screen
• Swipe upwards on the photo
• Tap Download

This will download the photo for offline use.
Unfortunately there is no way to bulk reinstate them once they've been backed up and removed from local storage, as that's an extremely edge usage case in reality I'm afraid. So currently the only option is one pic at a time.

[AJB88]

As said open the photo you want, press the menu, download to phone. I do this daily.