Infinite scroll is bad

A few weeks ago, I exhausted my free Google Drive storage quota, mostly with my phone’s photos backup. So, this week I decided I’d move the photos from Google Photos to OneDrive where I have more storage capacity, allowing me to continue backing up to Google.

Naturally, I thought this was going to be a fairly easy exercise. I mean, it should be as simple as selecting all the photos, clicking download, and uploading the package to Onedrive, right? Nope. Turns out, Google has some UI patterns whose sole purpose seems to be of frustrating you as much possible when you do decide to get your data out of their platforms. Sure, it’s also possible that this is just a case of the engineering team(s) placing form over function… it’s totally possible, but I like my tinfoil theory better. Let’s run with Google is evil instead.

First off, there is no easy way of selecting your files/photos/directories from Google Drive or Photos. There really is no Select All option, none that I could find anyways. Instead, the support forum for Photos points you to a special guide on how to select multiple files. I didn’t realise this needed a guide but okay, whatever. Oh, and on top of that you can only download 500 files at a time. If you have photos numbering in the thousands or more, best you settle in for some nice infinite scrolling and clicking fun.

Google Drive also had a similar UI when I last used it. This infinite scroll crap. What happened to straight-forward, easy to use pagination? Who asked for this shite, seriously?

Can I just have a finite number of pages of the listings of whatever it is you are listing. Also, decent search and filter options where possible would be greatly appreciated.

Infinite scrolling may seem like an elegant replacement for pagination. However, it’s not the answer for most websites. Infinite scrolling is probably not for you if site visitors want to achieve goal-oriented activities, such as when they need to backtrack or find specific information quickly.

A quote from people who know what they are talking about. - https://www.nngroup.com/articles/infinite-scrolling/