I am an active Local Guide with over 5.8 million views on my contributions. Recently, I’ve encountered an issue where my new photos are not being published. They get stuck in the ‘uploading’ state with a warning icon (triangle with an exclamation mark).
I have already tried the following troubleshooting steps:
1. Checked my internet connection (no issues).
2. Deleted all pending/stuck photos to clear the queue.
3. Attempted to upload the same photos from a different account, and they were published immediately. This confirms the problem is specific to my primary account.
4. Checked the Appeals Tool, but it doesn’t show any active violations.
It seems my account might be caught in a spam filter by mistake. Could you please review my account status and help restore my ability to contribute photos?
Hello @Bohdan, welcome to the Local Gudies Connect community!
By any chance, did you make your photos with a Galaxy S24 or S25? Try to delete one or all of the hidden photos, slightly crop and upload again. They might be published.
Your photos of “Deutsche Post Filiale”, when were they taken and with which camera/smartphone?
Regarding:
No, we cannot. We are all local guides like you and don’t have any special privileges. This applies even to “Connect Moderators”, but they can escalate to Google in some cases.
Hello @WilfriedB, you hit the nail on the head! I am indeed using a **Galaxy S24 FE**.
The photos of “Deutsche Post Filiale” were taken about a month ago. It seems there is a technical compatibility issue with this specific phone model and Google Maps uploads.
I will try to crop the images as you suggested to see if that triggers a successful upload. Is there any specific setting in the S24 FE camera I should change to avoid this in the future?
Until now, I am not aware of any details or other workarounds. Some other local guides who reported the same problem, assumed it is not the S24 camera itself, but rather a recent Android update which caused it. That’s why I asked for the date and camera of your photos showing Deutsche Post Filiale and OBI.
If you have access to a Windows PC and can download ExifTool, there is a faster workaround (see my link).
On top of @WilfriedB great help, I would like to add, that many of your photos are redundant. This means too similar and not helping users understand the places.
Thank you @MortenCopenhagen for pointing that out. I understand now that many of my photos were redundant. I will make sure to select only the best and most unique shots for each place in the future to better help other users.
@Bohdan I’m having a similar issue, although not as many of my photos have been removed as in your case. I’m using a Samsung S23, so I’ll try editing the photos today as @WilfriedB advised and see if that helps.
