If you are used to Google Photos storing all your pics and videos, we have some bad news to share with you. The free version of Google Photos is coming to an end on June 1st. The Android parent announced that it plans to make major changes to its cloud storage. The reason behind this is that Google wants to sell tiered services the same way that Apple does with its famous iCloud.
Google Photos users will still receive 15GB of free storage among all their Google accounts. On the bright side of things, there are many alternatives that you can use for cloud storage. In fact, we wrote an article that details the top 3 best cloud storage services that offer free space.
What to Do Before Google Photos is No Longer Free
With so many subscriptions that we pay every month, it’s understandable that some people may not be interested in upgrading their Google Photos subscription. This is why we are advising all Google Photos users to make sure to backup all their current photos and videos in High (or express) quality. This needs to be done before June 1.
Follow the next steps to backup all your pics and videos in high quality on Google Photos:
- Access Google Photos Settings;
- Select Backup and Sync;
- Choose Upload Size;
- Now, you can change the setting to High or Express quality.
If you followed the guide above, you have succeeded in saving all your media files in high quality and will not be required to pay more money for this feature starting June 1.
Subscribe to Google One
We also want to mention that an alternative method to receive extra cloud storage is to subscribe to Google One. This cloud storage service works similarly to Apple’s iCloud and it allows users to pick between 100G, 200GB, and to 2TB of space for $1.99, $2.99, and $9.99 a month respectively.