Some much needed features for Google Photos. Yay!

Some much needed features for Google Photos. Yay!

Originally shared by John Elstone

We have two features that will begin rolling out on Android today:

Helping users free up storage space on their Android device:
On the Settings screen, users will now see a “Free Up Space” button. Clicking on the button will prompt the user to bulk-delete copies of photos that have already been backed up from their device. To prevent device copies from being accidentally deleted, we’re asking users to double-confirm their intent during the ‘Free Up Space’ flow.

Users who are backing up their photos in High quality may now also receive an Assistant card prompting them to bulk delete device copies when they’re nearing the storage limit on their devices (currently only users who are backing up at Original quality receive these cards).

Deleting photos from SD-card enabled devices
We’re rolling out a fix that will allow users on certain SD-card enabled devices to delete photos stored on an SD card. This should prevent the issue of a photo continuing to show up in the Photos view despite being deleted, a frustrating experience for users.

We have one feature that will begin rolling out on the Web on Wednesday:

Downgrade previously uploaded photos from “Original quality” to “High quality”
When users choose to backup their photos and videos to Google Photos, we allow photos to be uploaded in two ways:
“Original quality” (large file, full resolution). These photos count against a user’s Google storage quota.
“High quality” (smaller file, compressed file). These photos don’t count against a user’s Google storage quota.

If a user joined Google Photos and selected the “Original quality’ setting for their photos, but changed their mind, they could have future media backed up in “High quality”. However, for media already backed up in “Original quality” before then, users were in an awkward state: they had no way to downgrade that media to “High quality”.

With this update, users will be able to downgrade previously backed up photos from “Original quality” to “High quality” by visiting photos.google.com/settings from their computer and clicking ‘Recover Storage’.