Google Drive and Google Photos will be decoupled by July this year

Google plans to stop the automatic synching feature between Google Drive and Google Photos by 10th July this year. This is the company's effort to clear up any confusion between the two services.

Now, Google Photos automatically syncs its contents to Google Drive. The removal of this feature will allow for granular control when managing content across both Drive and Photos. There will be a new feature in Google Drive that allows the user to manually choose photos and videos from Drive for import into Photos. Content, copied in Original Quality, will count towards the user's storage quota on both Google Drive and Google Photos.

For both Windows and macOS users of Backup and Sync application, items uploaded in High Quality won't reduce storage quota. Content uploaded in Original Quality to both services will only count once towards the user's storage quota.

Apparently, Backup and Sync is the ideal way to upload content to both services while reducing the contents' storage footprint of storage quota. Photos and videos that are already uploaded from Google Drive to Google Photos will remain.

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The Google Photos folder on Google Drive will stop its automatic updates once the link between the services is severed.

Things to take note of before the 10th July deadline

Check the current settings between Google Drive and Google Photos (if you are syncing from Google Drive in Google Photos)

If they are set to automatic syncing, i.e., Google Drive's photos and videos are uploaded to Google Photo. This will continue until their link is terminated after 10th July 2019.

If Google Photos folder is in use on your Google Drive

Google recommends not to use Google Photos folder that's on available on Goole Drive. If it's currently disabled, it's recommended to leave it, status quo.

If it's in use now, the contents of Google Photos are syncing to Google Drive. After the deadline, photos and videos on Google Drive and Google Photos will remain. Any changes made to content on one service will not affect the other, as the link between the two will be terminated.

This article was first published in Hardware Zone.