Keeping Them Separate Going Forward
Okay so last time we got your screenshots out of your photo backup, moved into their own folder or album, out of the mess. That felt good, right? Clean.
Sooo here's the thing nobody tells you. That cleanup doesn't stick by itself. Your phone doesn't know you just did that work. Tomorrow you'll screenshot a recipe or a text conversation you need to remember, and if you don't change one setting, it'll go right back into your camera roll and sit there with your actual photos again.
So this lesson is about making that separation automatic, so you're not doing this cleanup every three months for the rest of your life.
The setting that actually matters
On iPhone, screenshots save to the regular Photos app no matter what, that part you can't turn off. What you can do is make sure your backup tool treats them differently once they land there.
In Google Photos: open the app, tap your profile picture top right, then Photos settings, then Backup. There's an option for "Backup screenshots" or something worded close to that depending on your version. Turn it off. Now Google Photos stops sweeping them into your backed-up library at all. They stay on your phone, they show up in your regular camera roll still, but they're not getting uploaded and counted against your storage or mixed into your synced albums.
If you're an iCloud Photos person, there isn't a clean toggle for this one, which I'll be honest about. iCloud backs up everything in Photos, screenshots included. Your workaround is the album trick we did last time, keep using that Screenshots smart album to review and clear out, on a schedule, not just once.
For Android, and I said this before and I'll say it again, I'm shakier here. Some phones have a setting in the Gallery or Photos app itself for "exclude from backup" on specific folders. Samsung phones especially tend to have a Screenshots folder that lives separate already. If you've got an Android phone, this is a good moment to turn to the person next to you and compare notes, because someone in this room has already solved it for your exact phone.
Build a habit, not just a setting
The setting helps, but habits are what actually keep a camera roll usable long term. Here's mine, for what it's worth.
Once a week, usually Sunday night when I'm already on my phone doing nothing useful, I open the Screenshots album and just look at it for thirty seconds. Anything I don't need anymore, gone. Anything I want to keep, like a receipt for something I might return, or Audrey's basketball schedule, I leave it there. It's a junk drawer, and junk drawers are fine as long as you know that's what they are.
I feel like people treat their whole camera roll like it needs to be a museum. It doesn't. Some of it is just stuff you needed for two weeks. Let it be that.
Why this is worth the fuss
I mentioned early on that I lost a batch of Jackson's kindergarten pictures once. Phone died, no backup, gone. I bring that up a lot in this class, probably too much, but it's the reason I take any of this seriously at all.
Here's the connection to screenshots, though, and it's one I didn't think about until later. Even with backup running, if your good photos are buried under four hundred screenshots, you're not going to notice when something's missing. You scroll past the mess, you assume it's all there, and you don't actually look. Keeping screenshots separate isn't just tidiness. It means when you do check your backup, you can actually see what's in it. You can't audit a drawer you can't see into.
Screenshots are not photos. I'll die on that hill. Keep them apart and your whole system stays something you can trust, instead of something you're just hoping is working.
Before next time
Go turn off screenshot backup in Google Photos if that's your setup, or set a recurring reminder to clear your Screenshots album if you're on iPhone. Either way, actually do it this week, don't just nod along and forget by Wednesday.