Google Photos is canceling the unlimited cloud storage space for all users on June 1st - only owners of a Pixel smartphone are allowed to keep it. We will explain to you which alternatives you now have to back up your photos and why you should start with the data recovery as soon as possible.
Unlimited storage, automatic sorting and quick comparison with the photo album on the smartphone: for many years, Google Photos was, for many years, the number 1 cloud solution for saving their pictures. But now there is a bitter turning point:
From June 1, 2021, the same storage space for image backups will apply as for every Google account, i.e. 15 gigabytes for everything: Gmail , Google Photos , Google Drive . According to Google, the reason for this is the growing demand for online storage. Only users of a Pixel smartphone can still save their images in the app without any limit. Everyone else has to find an alternative or subscribe to Google One , the new Google storage service in the cloud:
That's how much Google One costs
• the 100 gigabyte package costs 1.99 euros per month
• 200 gigabytes cost 2.99 euros a month
• if you need more, you can get the 2 terabyte storage option, which then costs € 9.99 a month
• For 99.99 euros a month there is 10 terabytes of storage space
• the 20 and 30 terabyte packages are available for 199.99 and 299.99 euros per month, respectively
With an average file size of 4 MB per photo, you can save around 25,000 images with the 100 GB package. Google Photos - Android App 5.41
With "Google Photos", the search engine giant Google wants to create a central location for all your photos and videos, brings unlimited storage space and is ideally linked to your Google account.
Google Photos iPhone / iPad app 5.41
With "Google Photos", the search engine giant Google wants to create a central location for all your photos and videos, brings unlimited storage space and is ideally linked to your Google account.
Method 1: Now upload everything
From mid-2021, Google Photos will no longer offer unlimited storage for photos.
Good to know: all the images that you have already saved in Google Photos will not require any additional data in the future either. You can apply this to all photos that you upload to Google Photos from your device before June 1, 2021.
This means that you can upload all important images via Google Photos until the end of the month and thus make the backup as extensive as possible. However, this is not a permanent solution, because no new files can be added after the deadline. In addition, Google will delete your photos at the latest if you exceed the storage space limit for more than two years or are inactive for 24 months! You should therefore take care of a backup of your pictures now .
Method 2: clean up Google storage
You can quickly recognize the largest files in Google Drive.
There is no free alternative to Google Photos that promises unlimited storage. So if you are satisfied with the remaining 15 gigabytes of memory in the future, you should clean up your memory with the Google services once. To this end, there will be a tool from mid-2021 that will make it easier to manage photos and videos. In Google Drive , you can quickly feel the large space hogs by clicking on the "Storage" button on the left. Do not forget to empty the trash, as this is also counted towards the 15 gigabytes.
But Gmail also saves a little space: Search for "larger: 4M" to find all emails larger than 4 megabytes. These can then be marked and deleted in one fell swoop. In this way, an additional image can be saved for each removed message.
Shop recommendation for Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2 TB Black External Portable Hard Drive (USB 3.0) (STHN2000400) Method 3: Switch to an alternative file host
Many do not know: Amazon Prime includes free photo storage.
You may also want to consider an alternative cloud solution. Or maybe you already have access to online storage and just aren't using it?
• Amazon Photos: If you are an Amazon Prime user, you can save and organize your picture collection online in original size. Similar to Google Photos, you can edit the photos directly in the browser or apply filters and effects. However: videos cannot be saved for free or only 5 GB of them - and they are gone quickly. For this you need paid storage space just as if you are not an Amazon Prime customer. At Amazon you pay 1.99 euros per month for 100 GByte and 9.99 euros for 1 TByte.
• Microsoft OneDrive: With OneDrive, Microsoft also offers an online storage service that is often forgotten. All users of an Office 365 license automatically have storage space on Microsoft's servers. Microsoft 365 Single, for example, contains 1 TB of online storage that you can also use for your image collection. The Microsoft 365 Family family license even provides 6 TB of total storage (1,000 GB per person). After you've uploaded photos, OneDrive helps you organize and find your photos using features like photo search, tags, and albums. However, you have to do without great image processing functions in the Microsoft solution.
• Network cloud storage: 2 GByte with Dropbox, 5 GByte with OneDrive, 15 GByte with Google Drive: How about instead if you had 22 GByte in just one place? Or even better: How about just under 200 GB? Or no size limit at all? The freeware Cloudevo makes exactly this possible. Because the software bundles your cloud storage into a common large drive. This way you get theoretically unlimited cloud storage. We'll explain how it works exactly.