Google Photos Loses Drive Integration Soon, How To Manage Your Photo Library

We haven't talked much about Google Drive and Google Photo over the last year. When we last spoke of Google Drive in 2017, Google Drive file stream was emerging to replace the Google Drive app for both Mac and PC users. In 2018, Google AR Core left beta and landed for Google Photos for Android and iOS. Google is now talking about changes that it is making to how Google Drive and Google Photos work together.

Google knows that lots of people store photos and video on both Google Drive and Google Photos. Google says that users have complained that the connection between Drive and Photos is confusing and to fix that it plans to make changes to simplify the experience across Drive and Photos.

Among the changes will be a change in how things automatically sync between Google Drive and Google Photos. Starting in July, new photos and videos in Photos won't be added to the Photos folder in Drive Photos and videos deleted in Drive will not be removed from Photos. At the same time, items deleted in Photos won't be removed from Google Drive. The idea is to prevent accidental deletion of items across products.

Google Photos will get a new "Upload from Drive" feature that will allow users to choose photos manually and videos from Drive, including "Shared with Me" items to import into Photos. Once the files are copied, they aren't connected between Drive and Photos. However, items copied in Original Quality will count towards a user's storage quota in both Drive and Photos.

Google notes that Backup and Sync on Windows and Mac systems in High Quality and Original Quality will continue to work. Items uploaded in High Quality won't count against your storage quota and items uploaded using Backup and Sync in Original Quality on both services will only count once towards your quota. All existing photos and videos from Drive in Photos uploaded before the change will remain in Drive but will no longer be updated.