Google Photos will not offer free unlimited storage from June 2021; details here

Google's photo sharing and storage service Google Photos will no longer offer unlimited free storage to its users for the “high quality” photos starting next year. On Wednesday, the company announced the changes in a blog post, saying in order to “welcome even more of your memories,” it needs to institute a cap.

'We are announcing a change to our storage policy'

"A remarkable 28 billion new photos and videos are uploaded to Photos every week. To welcome even more of your memories and build Google Photos for the future, we are announcing a change to our storage policy," Google said in a tweet. It added that starting June 1, 2021, new photos and videos uploaded in High quality will begin counting towards the user's 15GB of Google Account storage.

“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,” said Shimrit Ben-Yair, Vice President of Google Photos.

'There’s no action you need to take today'

"Any photos or videos you’ve uploaded in High quality before June 1, 2021, will not count toward your 15GB of free storage. This means that photos and videos backed up before June 1, 2021, will still be considered free and exempt from the storage limit. You can verify your backup quality at any time in the Photos app by going to back up & sync in Settings," Google said.

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Google claims that roughly 80% of Photos users won’t hit their 15GB cap for about three years after the new policy goes into effect. After June 1, 2021, however, you’ll have to consider how to best backup your photos and videos. "As your storage nears 15 GB, we will notify you in the app and follow up by email," Google informed. If users want more storage, they will have to pay monthly for a Google One subscription, which starts at Rs 130 per month (Rs 1,300 per year) for 100GB.

Google also said it will offer a new free tool next summer that will help Photos app users easily manage their already backed up media. "To understand how this impacts you, you can see a personalized estimate for how long your storage may last. This estimate takes into account how frequently you back up photos, videos and other content to your Google Account. This tool will help you review the memories you want to keep while also surfacing shots you might prefer to delete, like dark or blurry photos or large videos," the company said.

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