Every phone keeps its own photos in your Opensolr account. When a phone is reset, replaced or loses the app, its photos stay behind. This page says what happens then, and what to do.
Opensolr Photos creates one index per phone, named after an identifier Android gives the app on that phone. Reinstalling or updating the app keeps the identifier, so the phone finds its photos again. A factory reset or a new phone gets a new identifier: to the app that is a new device, and the old phone's photos stay in your account, untouched, until you decide.
Android gives an app no warning before a reset or an uninstall, so the app cannot clean up after itself. Two things cover that instead.
When you sign in on a phone that has no photos of its own yet, and your account already holds photos from other phones, the app lists them by phone name — Samsung SM-S918B Galaxy S23 Ultra, Xiaomi 25102PCBEG — and asks which one is this device.
- Pick the phone this one used to be (the same phone after a reset, or its replacement with the same photos copied over) and the app carries on with those photos: nothing is read again, nothing new is created in your account.
- None of these, this is a new device starts fresh, with an index of its own.
The question is only asked in that one situation: a phone without photos of its own and an account that has some. Never on a reinstall, never on an update.
Once a week Opensolr looks at every Opensolr Photos index. One that no phone has synced with for 30 days (no request, no photo written) is considered left behind, and its owner gets one email, once per phone, saying which phone it was and how many photos it holds. Under section 9.2 of the Terms, an index that stays unused may be removed; nothing is removed automatically, and never without that email first.
Open Opensolr Photos on it. One sync, and the index is in use again; the notice is cleared and comes back only after another 30 quiet days.
Delete its photos from your account in the control panel: the index is named photos_…__dense and the email names the phone. They stop counting against your account's indexes and disk space.
- The app never deletes an index. Not on sign-out, not on reinstall, not on update.
- The photos themselves were never in the index, only their words, tags and details. Deleting an index deletes nothing on any phone.
- A phone that picks the wrong entry in the question above can be pointed elsewhere: sign out, sign in, and the question is asked again while the phone has no photos of its own.