The end of Google Photos as a free backup solution for your future photo history is days away. On June 1, Google Photos will no longer allow you to backup every single photo you take at high quality, unless you are OK with it counting towards your free Google storage cap or if you plan on buying a Google One subscription.
To get you all prepared for this imminent moment, Google announced today that it is adding a new tool to help you easily manage your storage quota and is also changing the name of the high quality storage tier to “Storage Saver.”
The new “Manage storage” tool will show up within your backup & sync settings and it’ll do some cool things. It tries to automatically find photos you may not want, like those that are blurry, are old screenshots, or that are large videos you may have no need for. When you enter the tool, you’ll see categories for items like this with their storage amounts and a bunch of suggestions for images you should consider getting rid of.
As for the rename of the high quality tier to “Storage Saver,” this is Google trying to simplify the naming of the way you backup photos. Makes sense, right?
You have one week! (Unless you own a Google Pixel phone.)