How to Remove Profile Photo from Google Account

Feb. 20, 2021

Google account is something most of us have and if you’re reading this, you probably have one. Although you can easily change your Google account’s profile picture, removing it is not as straightforward as you would expect. In this guide, we’ll be discussing the steps involved to remove your Google account’s display picture.

Remove Profile Photo from Google Account

You can remove your Google account’s profile picture from both web and mobile. We’ve also added steps to permanently delete your picture, so read on till the end and make sure you don’t miss it. Without beating around the bush, let’s get started with the steps.

1. Visitmyaccount.google.comandhead to the ‘Personal Info’ sectionfrom the left side menu.

2. From here, scroll down to the bottom until you see a ‘Choose what others see’ section. Just below this,click on the option titled ‘Go to About me.’

3. About me page shows all your basic information. Alternatively, you canclick on this linkto directly access the About me page – thereby skipping the first two steps.Click on the profile picture sectionto proceed further.

4. You’ll finally see a ‘Remove’ button to remove profile picture from your Google account. Do keep in mind that your profile picture is visible across Google services and removing it from here will remove the picture from all the Google services that previously showed your picture.

Before starting the process,make sure that your Google Contacts app is on version 3.38 or higher. If your phone has an older version of Contacts, update the appfrom Google Play Store.

2. You’ll now see the list of Google accounts on your phone.Locate the accountthat you want to remove the profile picture of andtap on its profile picture preview.

3. From the page that appears now,tap on the Remove button. And that’s it. You can easily remove the picture from your Google account with these three steps.

Note:The easiest way to remove profile picture from Google account is through Google Contacts app. Although you can change your current profile picture from Google Account’s About me section accessed throughSettings -> Google -> Manage your Google Account, you can’t remove it. If you don’t use Google Contacts, you can follow the steps given above for desktop in a web browser of your choice from your smartphone.

Removing a profile picture doesn’t automatically delete your image from Google. You can find all your old profile pictures onAlbum Archive. Here are the steps to delete the image from Album Archive:

1. OpenGoogle’s Album Archiveandclick on the ‘Profile Photos’ folder.

2. Open one of your old profile pictures, click on the vertical three-dots menu in the top-right corner, andchoose ‘Delete photo.’You can also download your old profile picture from here if you want a copy of it.

3. Google will now urge you to confirm deleting the picture as it is permanent and you can’t restore it later.Click on ‘Delete’ to permanently delete the picture.

So, that was our quick guide to help you remove your profile photo from your Google account. If you found this helpful, take a look at how you canset up auto-delete for your Google accountor evenremove Google from your life. Also, if you are sensitive about your profile pictures, check out our linked article to see how you canhide your WhatsApp and Telegram display picture.

Subin writes about consumer tech, software, and security. He secretly misses the headphone jack while pretending he’s better off with the wireless freedom.