As of today (1st June), Google have announced that their unlimited cloud storage for Google Photos will end!
This blog post will detail why these changes are taking place and how this affects you.
Why are Google making these changes?
Google are removing the unlimited free cloud storage for Photos, in favour of their new Google One subscription service.
Google One is a subscription-based cloud storage service. You can find out more about the service and prices on Google’s website here
How does this affect all the photos and videos you already have backed up?
There is no need to worry about deleting any photos and videos you already have in Google Photos.
Any media before the 1st of June 2021 is exempt from the storage limits and will not count towards your account storage.
What does this mean going forward?
Google currently have a 15GB free limit on storage. This means that photo and video storage will be free until you meet this limit. (Remember that the 15GB limit is across all your Google services such as Drive, not just Photos).
If you go over the storage limit, you will either need to purchase more storage through Google One or delete some data in order to continue uploading new photos to Google Photos.
How you can check your current account storage
In Photos, Google are rolling out a tool which lets you see how much storage you have left.
Google have also added a helpful tool within the storage management interface which shows you an estimate of how long your storage will last based on your usage.
Read more about the changes
You can read about the changes in more detail on the Google Blog here.