It’s time to micromanage your photos and video now, otherwise, you won’t have enough space for the important stuff since Google is going to end its unlimited free storage policy for photos and videos. As of yesterday, any new video or photo you upload will now count towards your free upload quota of 15GB.
The good thing is that the photos and videos you added before June 1st are not part of the cap. Meaning you have 15GB to play around with before opening your wallet. There are 3 plans to look into depending on how much storage you actually want. The most basic one starts at $2 per month for 100GB of storage and other features like Google Store discounts.
Google announced back in November that this was going to happen. The free 15GB cap is a move meant to encourage people to opt for their monthly subscriptions. The 15GB limit should tide us over for a year or so depending on what we upload. Any photos and videos backed up before June 1st are exempt from that limit. Even with the new limit, more than 80% of current users should be okay for a few years.
You’ll be notified if you ever get close to your limit and after that, it’s either delete stuff to make room using the new free storage management tool that Google added or shill out some cash monthly or annually. You can check your backup quality in the Photos app by going to Settings > Backup & Sync.
Google will even provide your own personalized estimate for how long you can expect to last with the 15GB limit given how often you upload photos and videos. Other than that there are several different plans available.
- 100GB: $2 a month or $20 annually
- 200GB: $3 a month or $30 annually
- 2TB: $10 a month or $100 annually
I guess if you’re a professional photographer, you’ll need that 2TB option since DSLR pictures are pretty big. You can subscribe by going to the Google One site by signing into the Google account you want to use. Or if you’ve decided that you no longer want to use Google Photos, there are other services that are available.
Now if you own a Google Pixel phone then you nothing to worry about just go about your day as if you never read this article. Since all Google Pixel users are exempt from any Google Photos limits. So upload as much as you want.
