The Google Photos backup feature quickly eats into your Google account storage. While it’s great for saving your memories, you might run into issues when you no longer have enough storage space. This Photos update now lets you free up that space for more important files without deleting the photos on your phone.
Delete Backed-Up Photos and Videos While Keeping Them on Your Device
The company first dropped theUndo device backupfeature io iOS in December 2024, via an announcement onGoogle Photos Help. The latest update to Google Photos made this feature available on Android, so you can now easily clean up your backup and get more space in your account.
Here’s how you may clean up the photos in your backup and get more cloud storage space:
Once done, all the images and videos backed up to Google Photos will be deleted. This will free up your cloud storage, but will also delete them from the Google Photos app. They will then only exist on your phone.
If you don’t back up your photos and videos elsewhere after doing this, losing your phone means you will no longer have access to your photos and videos.
If you still want to have your most important photos backed up but don’t want to pay for more cloud storage, you canpick which folders to back up on Google Photosinstead of choosing everything. You can also check out these otherways to free up storage space on Google Photos, like converting your photos to a lower quality and deleting unsupported videos.
Finally, if you’re trying to move away from Google services, you can choose any one of theseprivacy-focused Google Photos alternativesinstead to protect and back up your memories.
