‘Blank grey boxes’: images don't show up on Google Photos for many [updated]

Update: One of the many users who raised the ‘blank grey boxes’ issue on official Photos forum has said that the problem appears to be fixed. See his comment here.

Original story below:

Have you been waiting for pictures to load on your Google Photos, and all it displays is blank or grey boxes? Well, turns out, you are not the only one facing this problem.

Users report when they log into Google Photos, all they get to see is empty or blank grey boxes instead of actual pictures. In certain cases, a few pictures do show up but rest are blank thumbnails. For some but not all, refreshing and opening in incognito mode did the trick.

The screenshot shared by a user shows what it actually looks like:

The bug dates back to July, 2016 when it was reported for the first time. But it is yet to be addressed.

On May 2, 2017 the issue was re-reported. An expert from Google Products addressed users on May 9, 2017 that

“I’m getting this issue checked for you with the product team”.

She further added

“The team is aware about the issue and are looking into it”

on May 13, 2017 and repeated the same on June 8, 2017.

On June 28, 2017 another expert put forward that

“There are several similar threads. I escalated this issue”.

There were no updates after that. It’s clear that Google is aware of the issue, but sadly, there’s no information on if and when it will be fixed. In case of any further development on the issue, we’ll keep you posted.

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