Google Photos “Undo Backup” Simplifies Managing Cloud Storage – Talk Android

The magic of the cloud is magic that a man like Houdini probably could never have envisioned. Instead of needing to worry about how much storage your smartphone or your computer has, you can just dump your stuff on the cloud, so storage is a worry of the past.

Photos and videos are, for most people, the quickest way to fill your storage. That’s why Google Photos is a platform that many Android users quickly learn to love. However, the same way that photos and videos can stuff your device storage is the same way they can clutter cloud storage. A new Google Photos feature makes this a little less of a problem.

Google Photos Introduces A New Way To Clear Your Backups In Cloud Storage

I never thought that I’d be able to fill up a smartphone with 512GB of storage, but about 60% of my device’s storage is filled up by my photos and videos. And yes, the remaining 40% is also packed full. This is why cloud storage is such a great thing since it gives you a way to free up space on your device without having to permanently lose memories or important files.

The exact opposite scenario is valid too. Sometimes you want to free up cloud storage because you have those files stored somewhere else, typically on your device. In an app like Google Photos, there isn’t an easy way to kill all your backed-up photos and videos without deleting the versions that are stored on your device. However, that’s about to change.

Google Photos has introduced a new feature called Undo Backup, which is going to provide you with an easy way to remove all your photos and videos from Google Photos, freeing up all that space, without affecting the on-device versions of those files.

How Do I Use The Undo Backup Feature In Google Photos?

If you want to take this feature for a test run, it is fortunately very simple to do so. All you have to do is open Google Photos and follow the steps below:

1. Tap your profile icon in the upper corner of the app.
2. Tap “Google Photos settings”.
3. Now, choose “Backup”.
4. Scroll downwards and tap on “Undo backup for this device”.
5. You’ll be presented with a prompt to make sure you understand the impact of the action. Once you’ve read it and made sure, tick the box and then select “Delete Google Photos backup”.

Just like that, you’ll free up a library-worth of data from your cloud storage quota, while the files on your device remain untouched. Using this feature will also disable the automatic backup feature.

The Feature Will Be Rolling Out To Android Devices Very Soon

At the moment, this feature is not available in Google Photos for Android, though it is available on the iOS version. Odd that such a feature wouldn’t roll out on Google’s own OS first.

Anyway, it shouldn’t take too long for Android’s Google Photos to get the update, providing us all with a way to easily declutter out cloud storage.