Google is changing its Photos feature and will begin charging for anything above 15GB.

Google Decides to No Longer Provide Free Storage for Photos App

June 21, 2021. Mark that date for the end of the free ride. Google is going to start counting up your photos and possibly send you a bill for storing them.

Now that Google will soon start counting anything you’ve uploaded to Google Photos towards your storage limit—which tops out at 15GB for a free plan—it’s worth performing a personal audit to determine how much space you’re using. You may be able to stretch the free plan or it may make more sense to move to another service.

An article from David Murphy at lifehacker.com shows what you need to do to keep your photos and to store your future photos after June 2021.

First, figure out how much space you need or are using currently.

This one’s easy. Click here to see just how much space you have left on the tier of Google storage you’re using (free or paid). Google splits your storage use by app, so you can quickly see whether you need to roll up your sleeves and wade through your sprawling Gmail inbox or perhaps just delete a few gigantic files on Google Drive.

Now Google is offering you help in figuring these photo totals out. Google has released a tool that takes into account your current uploading and/or backing up habits and attempts to predict when you’ll run out of space if you keep using Google’s services like you normally do.

How do I reduce the amount of space I’m using in Google Photos?

It’s likely your Google Photos account is using more of your space than Google Drive or Gmail, especially if you’ve been uploading “Original Quality” content to take advantage of Google’s former “unlimited” offer.

Visit Google Photos’ settings and see if there any unsupported videos you can delete—movies that Google simply can’t convert for whatever reason. Download and/or delete them. Then, consider clicking on “Recover storage” to convert all of your “Original Quality” content to “High Quality” content, which should free up a lot of the space you’ve used in Google Photos so far.

How to start moving your Google photos somewhere else

If Google’s decision has you looking for a different hosting service, you’re probably also eager to find a quick and easy way to upload all of your photos and videos somewhere else. Please don’t try to download them manually from the Google Photos website. You’ll be there forever.

Instead, simply pull up Google Takeout in your web browser of choice. Deselect everything, and then go back and select the “Google Photos” option. Pick a delivery method for your files, as well as the options for the archives you’ll get, and then start the export process. Wait until you get Google’s email, download all of your photos and videos, and reupload them elsewhere.

To get the rest of Murphy’s process about understanding what Google is planning to do in June, please click the link below.

read more at lifehacker.com