Google Photos Ends Unlimited Free Storage For Unsupported Videos

Google switched things up back in 2015, offering unlimited free image and video storage on Google Photos at relatively high resolutions, but now the company is back with a small change. Going forward, Google Photos will still offer unlimited free image and video storage...except for video formats that it doesn't support.

Google had announced the unlimited free Photos storage back around summer 2015, and though it still offers that same great perk, it has made an adjustment. All videos uploaded to Google Photos after December 6, 2018, will take up storage space if they're in an unsupported format. The change appeared recently on Google's support website.

The site page for downloading or deleting unsupported videos now has a note stating, "Unsupported videos uploaded after December 6, 2018 take up storage space." Users will need to delete them if they want to free up that space, which involves hitting the trash can icon.

Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of popular video formats are supported by Google Photos, including MPEG4, AVI, and WMV. An unsupported video format would be, for example, a raw video that's uncompressed for post-processing later on. In that case, the customer will need enough available storage to backup the video.

In the grand scheme of things, this is a very minor limitation and Google's unlimited free storage remains an excellent option for users with a large number of digital images and videos. Users can avoid the issue by ensuring their camera is set to record videos in a format supported by Google Photos.