Google Photos is going to go through a major change next month that will undoubtedly disappoint a lot of users. Google will no longer offer free backup to Google Photos starting June 1. All photos and videos will be counted towards your 15GB free storage that you get with a Google account. Google has also added a new tool to Photos that lets you manage your storage. You can use this to check how much storage has been used, and also how you can clear photos to clear space. It will categorise photos that are blurry, screenshots, large, and from other apps. Google is also renaming the ‘High-quality storage tier’ to ‘Storage saver’. “While we’re updating the name, your photos and videos will continue to be stored at the same great quality,” Google said in its blog post. These tools may help in understanding your Google Photos storage better but don’t necessarily help much. Google blog read: Starting June 1, 2021, any new photos and videos you upload will count toward the free 15 GB of storage that comes with every Google Account or the additional storage you’ve purchased as a Google One member. Your Google Account storage is shared across Drive, Gmail and Photos. This change also allows us to keep pace with the growing demand for storage. And, as always, we uphold our commitment to not use information in Google Photos for advertising purposes. We know this is a big shift and may come as a surprise, so we wanted to let you know well in advance and give you resources to make this easier.
