The month of May 2021 is when Google Photos end its free service offer of unlimited free storage for high-quality photos and videos. From June onwards High-Quality photos will count to your 15GB storage that comes with your Gmail account.
There is no need to get surprised about this. Google announced last year that any new photos and videos uploaded to the service starting June 1st, 2021 will count towards the free 15GB of storage. That comes with every Google account, spanning Gmail, Drive, and now Photos.
Google Photos end its free service
So if you are reading this article before June 1st then you still have time to upload as many photos and videos to Google Photos. If you’ve got a collection of thousands of important memories you couldn’t stand to lose. Then now is the perfect time to back them all up. On the Google Photos app with its documents section because they won’t count against your storage.
But before you start uploading photos and videos you need to understand one thing. The unlimited free storage for photos and videos has only ever applied to “High quality” content. If you want to check and make sure that your content is being stored in the right format, head to the Google Photos Settings page.
And tap the toggle next to “High quality” under “Upload size for photos & videos.” Any “Original” photos and videos already count toward the storage limits, so if you need more room, choose “High quality.” Here you will also see a notification near the top of that page warning you about an important update to your storage.
If you click “Learn more,” you will be taken to this page, and if you’re logged into your Google account. The page will tell you how much storage you have left for photos and videos after June 1st. Google says once the change takes effect. “Over 80 percent of you should still be able to store roughly three more years’ worth of memories with your free 15 GB of storage.
Google will alert you if you begin to approach your storage limit. When that happens, your only option will be to pay for a Google One plan to expand your storage. Google offers $1.99 per month for 100GB, $2.99 per month for 200GB, and $9.99 per month for 2TB.