Google Drive and Google Photos will be independent

Google Drive and Google Photos will be independent

The synchronization modalities between the Google Drive and Google Photos they will change from next month. This was announced by the Mountain View group with a post that appeared on the pages of the official blog. The reason? Many believe the current dynamic is confusing and ineffective, not in line with the smart philosophy of the two platforms.


Many of you save photos and videos to both Google Drive and Google Photos, so you can keep them safe and have quick access. According to some feedback, the connection between the services is confusing, so next month we will make some changes to simplify the experience offered by Drive and Photos.


Google Drive and Photos: what will change?

Starting from 10 July, the new ones images and the new ones video uploaded to Drive will not automatically appear in Photos. Likewise, new Photos images and videos will not be added to the Drive Photos folder. Furthermore, the images and videos that users delete from the Drive archive will not be removed from Photos (and vice versa): this is to prevent the contents from being deleted by mistake from both platforms.



As of July 10, 2019, Google Photos and Google Drive will no longer sync automatically. These changes will allow you to easily choose where to store the photos and videos in the various products.

The change will be accompanied by the introduction of a unprecedented functionality for Google Photos, call "Load from Drive": this will allow you to manually select the photos and videos to import, including those contained in the “Shared with me” folder. Once copied, the items will not stay in sync between the two services: this means that by modifying or deleting one, the action will not be applied to its duplicate in the other platform.

It will therefore be necessary to ask again more attention to the space used: the contents saved in Original Quality will affect the quota available, both on Drive and on Photos. This is already the case (the upload is free only in High Quality), but being able to manage double the files for someone could be a problem.

The Backup and Sync software available for Windows and macOS will continue to work as usual, taking care of the upload to both services. In this regard, Google points out that by carrying out theupload of the same contents both on Drive and on Photos, their weight will affect the storage quota only once.


Anything that has been uploaded until July 10 will not be changed. More information can be found in the official guide. So let's close by summarizing what will change.

  • By uploading or deleting photos or videos to Google Drive or Google Photos, the changes will not be reflected in the other service;
  • on photos.google.com it will be possible to copy photos and videos from Google Drive to Google Photos;
  • items copied between Google Drive and Google Photos will take up storage space;
  • existing photos and videos will remain in Google Photos and Google Drive.
Source: Google Google Drive and Google Photos will be independent
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