Google Makes Shit Difficult

Google likes to make things more difficult than they need to be. As a security precaution I turn off automatically showing images in Gmail. Not only does this help protect against nefarious intrusions into your device, but it also helps slower connections stay speedy. 

Recently (as in this morning) I accidentally turned off the image blocking feature for one email sender and Google took that to mean all images would now be shown from that sender going forward. 

That's not what I wanted. So, I tried to find the turn images back off feature, which was hard to find as it wasn't clearly defined in the Settings under General or per the individual email address. 

Not only that, but when I went to Help and searched, all Google had available to help me was the How-To to turn feature on or off, not how to reactivate the feature for a single email sender. 

For the record, toggling this setting on/off for the entirety of Gmail didn't work either. 

Neither did searching the Help forums, which returned only one close search result ... from 12 years ago. Do you have any idea how much Gmail and Google have changed over 12 years? 

So, instead of having a quick solution to my problem, I spent more than 30 minutes trying to track down a solution - which was easy to find, but hidden for some reason. 

Below is how I resolved the issue. And keep in mind, this will clear all the email senders where you have allowed Gmail to download images automatically. So, if you have someone whom you don't mind their images coming to your emails, you will have to re-enable that feature on a case-by-case basis. 

On mobile, in Gmail, go to Settings:

Then, in the lists of accounts setting, select the three dots on the upper right:

Select Clear Picture Approvals:

Confirm:

I certainly hope that helped someone figure this out. I realize most people probably won't care, especially in areas where mobile or wifi connections are fast and plentiful, but there are times or areas where that may not be the case - or maybe you just want that added layer of security, like I do.