Hangouts: “photo sharing is not available because of your administrator settings”

If you get the error “photo sharing is not available because of your administrator settings” in Google Hangouts (iPhone, Android, or any other platform) when you’re trying to send a picture (either by taking a photo within hangouts or just selecting an existing picture on your device), here’s what’s up with that and how to fix it…

Why you’re getting this:

You’re probably using an e-mail address that’s NOT @gmail.com.  You’re using Google custom domains (or whoever assigned you your account is using it) or Google domains for business or education.  Your account does NOT have “Google Photos” enabled.

Samsung Galaxy Phones on Amazon.com
Samsung Galaxy Phones on Amazon.com

How to fix it:

If you’re NOT the administrator for the domain, then contact your domain administrator (the person that set up your account) and have them follow the following instructions:

If you ARE an administrator…

  1. Log into your domain control panel and click on “User”.image
  2. Click on the appropriate user account.
  3. Click on “Google Apps enabled”image
  4. Scroll down to “Show more” and click it.
  5. Then click “Additional Google services enabled”
  6. Scroll down and click on “Google Photos”.  It’s probably “off”.  Turn it on.
  7. image

Now the user should immediately be able to send images from within hangouts.

Thank you for sharing this article.  See this image?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.