Google Photos, the company’s online photo storage service, is losing its free storage. Starting on September 1st, users will have to pay $5 per month for the same amount of storage space as they currently have in their Google Photos account. The move comes as a response to the growing popularity of iCloud and other cloud-based photo storage services.
What’s Changing: No More Free Unlimited Storage
Google Photos only offered unlimited free storage for photos and videos backed up in “High Quality,” which it defines as 16 megapixels for photos and 1080p resolution videos. If you chose to upload photos and videos in High Quality (instead of Original Quality), Google would let you upload an unlimited number of them.
Starting June 1, 2021, Google Photos is losing its free unlimited storage for “High Quality” photos and videos. After that date, all the photos you upload will count toward your Google account’s storage limit. This limit is 15GB and is shared among services like Google Photos, Google Drive, and Gmail.
If you need more storage for your photos, you’ll have to pay up for a Google One storage plan.
Here’s the good news: Any existing photos you’ve already uploaded are grandfathered in and won’t count toward your storage. Only new photos you upload to Google Photos after that date will count toward the storage limit.
How to Get More Storage for Your Photos
If you like Google Photos, you can still use it. 15GB of free storage is more than many other services offer, so it’s still not a bad deal. For example, Apple only offers 5GB of free storage with iCloud.
If you plan to keep using Google Photos, you can monitor how much space you’ve used and how much you have available from the Google One Storage website. Google also has a Storage Management page that will help you free up storage in your Google account.
You can also buy more storage via Google One. Plans start at $1.99 per month for 100 GB of storage.
How to Download All Your Google Photos
Perhaps you’d like to leave Google Photos behind. You can download an archive of all the photos and videos you’ve ever uploaded to Google Photos from the Google Takeout website. (Google Takeout lets you download other data stored in your Google account, too.)
You can then upload the photos to whatever other photo service you want to use—or keep your photos on your own devices. Be sure to back up your photos and have multiple copies if you choose to store them yourself!
Alternatives to Google Photos
Google Photos isn’t the only game in town. Now that it will no longer offer unlimited storage, it might not be the best option for many people who were already using it.
Google Photos is still a fine photo storage solution, especially if you use Android devices and other Google services. But it’s no longer free for everyone, and that’s a big change.
If you’re an iPhone user who’s been using Google Photos instead of iCloud Photos because Google Photos is free, it might be time to consider switching.
