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google photos gallery does not load. have tried many suggested fixes. what's wrong with google photos on firefox?

  • 12 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by TyDraniu

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when I click on an album, I can see the photos, when I click on "photos" to see all, there are just gray boxes where the pics should be. If I click on a gray box, I can see the individual photo, but can't see them in the "gallery" view. this still happens with all addons disabled

when I click on an album, I can see the photos, when I click on "photos" to see all, there are just gray boxes where the pics should be. If I click on a gray box, I can see the individual photo, but can't see them in the "gallery" view. this still happens with all addons disabled

All Replies (12)

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Make sure you are not blocking content.

Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web link}

A small dialog should appear. Click Start In Safe Mode (not Refresh). Is the problem still there?


One issue that seems more common lately is Firefox's Content Blocking. When it is blocking content in a page, a shield icon will appear at the left end of the address bar next to the padlock icon. This article has more info on managing this feature:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/content-blocking

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running in safemode does not fix content blocking is turned off for google photos

sometimes when I go to the site, firefox will load some of the pics, but as I scroll down the page they become gray boxes. sometimes it won't load any pics.

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I also just found that when I try to open the edit function, there is a blank box where the photo should be

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Start your Computer in safe mode with network support. Then start Firefox. Try Secure websites. Is the problem still there?

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Linux+Safe+Mode Starting Any Computer In Safe Mode; Free Online Encyclopedia

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Forgot to add; Many site issues can be caused by corrupt cookies or cache.

Warning ! ! This will log you out of sites you're logged in to. You may also lose any settings for that website.

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already tried deleting cookies and cache. I just reluctantly installed chrome. works fine in chrome, so I don't expect starting my pc in safe mode will fix it.

looks like I will just have to use chrome.

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To clarify why Fred was likely asking you to run in Windows Safe Mode with networking, they are trying to rule out a conflict with your security software. Some firewalls or anti-virus protection programs may block Firefox from connecting to certain websites by mistake. So running in Windows Safe Mode would rule that out since the security software would be disabled while running in that mode.

But to add onto the possible solutions, there are a couple of things that I would recommend if Windows Safe Mode doesn't yield any positive results.

The first thing will sound weird, but I've seen it fix odd partial connectivity issues like yours before... try resetting Internet Explorer. Like I said, it may seem strange, but I've seen it help before.

To do that, follow these steps:

  1. In Windows search, find the Internet Options.
  2. Navigate to the Advanced tab.
  3. Press the Reset... button under the Reset Internet Explorer settings section.
  4. Press Reset.
  5. Restart your computer.

If that doesn't help, you can also try clearing your DNS cache. The DNS is the service that tells your computer what server to connect to. It's possible that the DNS has saved an incorrect location and needs to be refreshed. I've seen it cause issues in some browsers but not others.

On Windows, you can easily clear the DNS cache by doing the following:

  1. Press Windows key + R on your keyboard.
  2. Type ipconfig /flushdns (There is a space before the slash).
  3. Press Ok.

If that doesn't help, you can also try refreshing Firefox. This process will restore Firefox to its default state while saving your essential information like bookmarks, passwords, and open tabs. It fixes many issues of this nature.

Hope this helps.

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here are some further details about the symptoms... I have pics on google photos dating from current time going back to 2003. there are a lot of photos. there is a vertical timeline on the right side of the screen. when I open the google photos webpage, sometimes, but not always, the 1st month or so will load and I can see the images, although often, but not always, they are very low res. sometimes after a minute or two the resolution becomes normal. as I scroll down, once I get past where pics have loaded, there will usually be a number of the gray boxes that do not show the image, but they are "active"... I can click on them and see the pic individually. As I go further down the page, the gray boxes are not active... clicking on them does not open a pic. Also, there will be gaps where some pics load, then active gray boxes, then more loaded pics, then active gray boxes, then dead gray boxes.

If I go to the last active pic and open it, I can use the arrow button and see the pics that in the gallery view are dead, then when I go back to gallery view, sometimes those pics will have loaded, sometimes not.

sometimes when switching between viewing an individual pic and the gallery, pics that had previously been visible will be back to gray boxes.

letting the website sit there waiting for it to load does nothing.

Again, none of this happens in google chrome. I live in a rural area with pretty slow dsl, so it does take time for everything to load, but I just don't get these weird symptoms in chrome. Once they have loaded they are there and don't disappear again, and I can use the timeline on the right to jump around and once everything is loaded, it will all still be there. not so in firefox. sometimes if I jump from one spot in the timeline to where pics had been loaded they will be gone again and sometimes they will be there.

If I had to guess I'd say it's something about the combination of the slow internet speed and how firefox uses memory... My current pc has 32GB of memory though... my last one had 4 and the symptoms were the same with it, so adding memory doesn't seem to be a factor.


tried resetting IE, no change. I think I'd rather just use chrome than keep trying to get it to work on firefox. It works as it should on chrome. I guess I'm just curious as to what would cause this. I don't know much about all this but I'm skeptical it's an antivirus software issue (I use Webroot antivirus).

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also, just to reiterate, these symptoms do not occur when I'm viewing an album, so that seems to imply that firefox has a problem with the number of pics in the "all pics" gallery view but works when the "lot" is smaller.

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I only have about 70 photos in Google Photos so I don't think I can replicate the problem.

I notice when scrolling quickly or using Home and End that there is a lot of blurry-to-sharp transition/animation. I suspect it's part of the page design. I've never seen any other photo site that has that behavior once the photos have been loaded. Annoying.

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my biggest album has about 220 pics. it loads and displays on firefox with no problems at all.

I have thousands in the all pics gallery view.

if anyone has suggestions for alternatives or a better way to manage decades worth of pics I'm all ears. I got sucked into the google scene early on and once you're in, there are challenges to getting back out. but have had a lot of frustrations with them over the years and prefer the opensource/mozilla/linux type communities over the big guys...

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Try to install the useragent switcher and change the UA string to Chrome for this site.