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A way to easily find your ‘original quality’ media in Google Photos is coming
June 26, 2025
One of the biggest news stories of the week is the revelation thatGoogle Photos will no longer offer free backupsof your smartphone photos and videos starting in June 2021. When David Lieb, the product lead for Google Photos,made the announcement on Twitter, there were lots of questions. Thankfully, Lieb has actually answered quite a few of them.
Related:Will you pay to store more media in Google Photos?
One thing Lieb was able to confirm is that a Google Photos original quality management tool is in the works. Thislong-awaited toolwould allow users to easily find the photos and videos in their library that take up the most space. Invariably, most of those files would be at “Original Quality” rather than the compressed “High Quality” tier that is currently free. With a list of all the photos and videos that apply against your quota, you could then more easily download them and/or compress them so they won’t apply towards your quota in June 2021.
Google Photos original quality management: It’s about time
If you head to your Google Photos library today, the app will tell you how much space your original quality photos and videos take up. However, it won’t show you those files. It gives you the option to compress all of them, which would make it so they no longer apply to your storage quota. You also can’t organize your files by size to see the biggest ones at the top.
This isn’t ideal because it’s an all-or-nothing option. What if you backed up a particular photo or video at original quality for a specific reason? What if you don’t remember when that photo or video was taken or can’t even remember what it was? It would be a shame if you compressed that file and then came to regret it later.
Related:A beginner’s guide to Google Photos
A Google Photos original quality management tool would solve this problem. It can’t come a moment too soon, either, as the June 2021 deadline for all future uploads to go against your storage quota will be here before we know it. Before then, it’s in users’ best interests to get as many media files in at the high quality format — and as many files at original quality out or compressed.
Other changes could be on the way, too
On Twitter, Lieb saidthis was good feedback. Unfortunately, he did not confirm if it’s in the works or not.
Hopefully, Google is able to get all its ducks in a row before June 2021. A Google Photos original quality management tool is essential for users to be able to enter into that month with all their stored photos and videos not applying to their storage quota. More storage options would also be nice. If Google is going to make Photos a paid platform, it needs to ensure that it offers paid-quality features. The old excuse of, “well, it’s free so we can’t complain” won’t work anymore.
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