Important update about Google Photos storage

Fritz

Got the email this morning,

Hi dude,

We launched Google Photos more than five years ago and since then, it's become more than just an app to manage your photos.
It's become a place you go when you feel nostalgic and want to reminisce.

Today, Google Photos is the home for more than 4 trillion photos and videos, including yours, and a remarkable 28 billion new photos and videos are uploaded every week. In order to welcome even more of your memories and build Google Photos for the future, we are announcing a change to our storage policy.

Starting June 1, 2021, all new photos and videos backed up in High quality will count toward the free 15 GB of storage that comes with your Google Account or any additional storage you may have purchased, the same way other Google services like Google Drive and Gmail already do.

All photos and videos you back up in High quality before June 1, 2021 are exempt from this change and will not count toward your Google Account storage. This includes all of your existing content uploaded in High quality.

We don't take this decision lightly and we acknowledge that this is a big shift, so wanted to let you know well in advance and give you resources to help you navigate this change.

Do I need to do anything right away?
No, you can continue to use Google Photos to back up your photos and videos. After June 1, 2021 we will reach out and send you reminders when you are nearing your storage limit. Most users will have years before they need to take action.

When will I reach my free 15 GB of storage?
We created a personalized estimate that shows how much time you have until you reach your quota. This estimate takes into account how frequently you back up photos, videos and other content to your Google Account.

What can I do to manage my storage?
On June 1, 2021, we will be launching a new storage management tool which will help you easily find and delete dark, blurry, and otherwise unwanted content. You can also purchase more storage with Google One where available.

Money money money...

Iroshan464

Google photos is one of favorites. To back up photos kids and I take on my phone.
My account storage was almost full from email data, so I got the 100gb package and well worth it.
I know about privacy concerns, but since google know everything about me anyway, from email data and gsuite I don't mind.
May be it will change in the future.

Ympker

@Iroshan464 said:
Google photos is one of favorites. To back up photos kids and I take on my phone.
My account storage was almost full from email data, so I got the 100gb package and well worth it.
I know about privacy concerns, but since google know everything about me anyway, from email data and gsuite I don't mind.
May be it will change in the future.

Also very happy with them. Also the generated "memories/ do you remember? " is pretty cool. Being an Amazon Prime User, I might either transfer photos to Prime Photos unlimjted or upgrade my Google to 100GB. I have considered this many times anyway and they are doing a good job overall

Can't blame them for not wanting to provide free photo storage forever for millions of ppl.

Sova

I'm using them heavily for the unlimited storage bit and have a backup of everything in Koofr. I just love their "AI" features where they create little gifs from photos or extract them from videos. Also, the memories feature is great as well - "Oh look what I did 5 years ago when I didn't have any kids "

foxone

They collected enough data to train their AI I guess

Ympker

@foxone said:
They collected enough data to train their AI I guess

Can't expect them to do it for free. If they got smth out of it, nice We have been the product all along.

simlev

@Iroshan464 said:
I know about privacy concerns, but since google know everything about me anyway, from email data and gsuite I don't mind.

Yeah, but my pictures are not only about me...

Fritz

What if I upgraded my account but not Renew it?

Can I still use my Google Drive or Google Photos?

Iroshan464

@Fritz said:
What if I upgraded my account but not Renew it?

Can I still use my Google Drive or Google Photos?

You cannot upload until you come below the storage cap.
And they may delete data in two years. They said.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/11/google-cuts-back-on-its-free-storage-get-ready-to-pay-up/amp/

vyas

On a lighter note, the Thunderdrive LT 2 TB offer is still available

localhost

@vyas said:
On a lighter note, the Thunderdrive LT 2 TB offer is still available

Any link for this? Any reviews?

vyas

@localhost said:

@vyas said:
On a lighter note, the Thunderdrive LT 2 TB offer is still available

Any link for this? Any reviews?

Lol... Buy at own risk types.

iDrive (5 TB/ first year US $ 4, renewal at US $ 70) is a far better product and deal.

Janevski

Ye, it's all fun and games until, with no previous warning or question, you find all your android photos synchronized on a Google Photos account...
Uninstalled the app, deleted them all one by one and never again.
The world doesn't necessarily need to see incriminating pictures of my potatoes.

Ympker

Pro tip when evaluating how much storage you would need for your new Photos after Google Photos becomes freemium: Go to your "Google Dashboard", scroll down and see how many photos you currently have in total on Google Photos. For example, I had 34k photos on there.
According to lmgtfy the 100GB paid plan will be sufficient for about 33k photos.Luckily, old photos dont count towards that limit so go estimate your needs to get an idea whether it is worth moving elsewhere

Remember: 100GB is not only for Photos but also includes your GDrive usage and email.

FridayNightGamer

Pixel phones are excluded from this. Still unlimited high quality photos storage for them. It's cool that my phone signature is spoofed.

Fritz

@Ympker said:
Pro tip when evaluating how much storage you would need for your new Photos after Google Photos becomes freemium: Go to your "Google Dashboard", scroll down and see how many photos you currently have in total on Google Photos. For example, I had 34k photos on there.
According to lmgtfy the 100GB paid plan will be sufficient for about 33k photos.Luckily, old photos dont count towards that limit so go estimate your needs to get an idea whether it is worth moving elsewhere

Remember: 100GB is not only for Photos but also includes your GDrive usage and email.

Google Dashboard?

Ympker

@Fritz said:

@Ympker said:
Pro tip when evaluating how much storage you would need for your new Photos after Google Photos becomes freemium: Go to your "Google Dashboard", scroll down and see how many photos you currently have in total on Google Photos. For example, I had 34k photos on there.
According to lmgtfy the 100GB paid plan will be sufficient for about 33k photos.Luckily, old photos dont count towards that limit so go estimate your needs to get an idea whether it is worth moving elsewhere

Remember: 100GB is not only for Photos but also includes your GDrive usage and email.

Google Dashboard?

https://myaccount.google.com/intro/dashboard?pli=1

Iroshan464

Since uploads made from pixels are exempt, will be easy as spoofing the device as a pixel with magisk build props?

Fritz

@Ympker said:

@Fritz said:

@Ympker said:
Pro tip when evaluating how much storage you would need for your new Photos after Google Photos becomes freemium: Go to your "Google Dashboard", scroll down and see how many photos you currently have in total on Google Photos. For example, I had 34k photos on there.
According to lmgtfy the 100GB paid plan will be sufficient for about 33k photos.Luckily, old photos dont count towards that limit so go estimate your needs to get an idea whether it is worth moving elsewhere

Remember: 100GB is not only for Photos but also includes your GDrive usage and email.

Google Dashboard?

https://myaccount.google.com/intro/dashboard?pli=1

Wow. Gonna bookmark this link with my wallabag app.

Pretty neat to sum everything up.

Ympker

@Fritz said:

@Ympker said:

@Fritz said:

@Ympker said:
Pro tip when evaluating how much storage you would need for your new Photos after Google Photos becomes freemium: Go to your "Google Dashboard", scroll down and see how many photos you currently have in total on Google Photos. For example, I had 34k photos on there.
According to lmgtfy the 100GB paid plan will be sufficient for about 33k photos.Luckily, old photos dont count towards that limit so go estimate your needs to get an idea whether it is worth moving elsewhere

Remember: 100GB is not only for Photos but also includes your GDrive usage and email.

Google Dashboard?

https://myaccount.google.com/intro/dashboard?pli=1

Wow. Gonna bookmark this link with my wallabag app.

Pretty neat to sum everything up.

Yeah, I also didn't know about this before I googled "how many photos do I have on there?" ?

BlaZe

Blackblaze is good to back up those precious moment photos & videos.

I mean, chances of losing them are very minimal as compared to self-hosting solutions. Somewhat expensive but hey those photos are something which cannot be captured again

flips

Does Google Photos have any remaining competitors functionality wise (except maybe Apple)?
(Don't think iCloud Photos would work with Android?)

debaser

@flips said:
Does Google Photos have any remaining competitors functionality wise (except maybe Apple)?
(Don't think iCloud Photos would work with Android?)

Amazon Photos, I guess. Works pretty good for me.

I'm not too fond of big tech, but I like to think they're the least likely to lose my photos.

I backup my 'normal files' twice, but with photos it's more quadruple. I drop them in a directory on an external HDD and automagically backup them to Google Photos, Amazon Photos, Stack and Hetzner SB.

bdl

For those that are thinking of rolling their own solution, I've been using https://www.photosync-app.com/home.html on Android and iOS, and it's solid.

akhfa

@bdl said:
For those that are thinking of rolling their own solution, I've been using https://www.photosync-app.com/home.html on Android and iOS, and it's solid.

Seems like good applications

Can its premium version be set to automatically upload into 2 cloud storage? For example I want it to automatically upload into Dropbox and s3 for every photo and video I take.

Edit: nevermind. I tried it myself. It can auto upload to just 1 selected target

bdl

@akhfa said:

@bdl said:
For those that are thinking of rolling their own solution, I've been using https://www.photosync-app.com/home.html on Android and iOS, and it's solid.

Seems like good applications

Can its premium version be set to automatically upload into 2 cloud storage? For example I want it to automatically upload into Dropbox and s3 for every photo and video I take.

Edit: nevermind. I tried it myself. It can auto upload to just 1 selected target

Correct, one target - but I just use rclone to move things around as I want

flips

@bdl said:
For those that are thinking of rolling their own solution, I've been using https://www.photosync-app.com/home.html on Android and iOS, and it's solid.

For syncing photos there are many solutions, including this one (which works well, as far as I can remember, used it a while back), but not too many services have the option to tag people etc. and have them recognized for searching etc.

@debaser said: Amazon Photos

Hm, so ... Amazon photo is free for Prime Members, or free for all? ... For unlimited full-res photo storage? (5 GB for videos is definitively only for Prime members)

Amazon Photos offers unlimited, full-resolution photo storage, plus 5 GB video storage for Prime members

... or did I misread?
Functionality wise vs. Google Photos?

yoursunny

I never used Google Photos or Amazon Photos or iCloud Photos.

Every photo I take on my phone and not deleted before I connect to WiFi is synchronized to BaCloud free Nextcloud account (10GB) and appears on my computer.
From there, I sort them into folders by time and location, and move them to a USB hard drive hooked onto the home router and mounted over SAMBA.
Every few months, I upload the photos to Facebook, and copy them to another offline USB hard drive.
These must be complete before I delete the originals from the phone.

Photos taken on the DSLR camera skip the Nextcloud.
They go straight into the USB hard drive on the home router.

In the past, the Nextcloud was self-hosted in Virmach 384MB, but I moved it to BaCloud before the VZ6 to KVM transition and never moved back.
Despite higher latency from me, BaCloud is faster than the self hosted one.

In the past, I also generate lower resolution pictures (1600x1200) and upload them to OneDrive (15GB for accounts created before 2009), but I haven't done so for several years.