Google Photos and Drive will not sync automatically starting from July 10, 2019, which means the photos and videos from a user’s Drive will not automatically show in Photos and vice versa. The company put out a blog post explaining the move was aimed at simplifying the experience across Drive and Photos.
However, any new photos or videos that a user saves in Drive after July 10 will not be synced with Photos automatically. Google will also add a new “Upload from Drive” feature to Photos to let users manually choose photos and videos from Drive to import into Photos. Shared media can be uploaded as well.
“We’ve heard feedback that the connection between these services is confusing, so next month, we’re making some changes to simplify the experience across Drive and Photos,” Google said in a post. Users should note that their existing media that is synced with the two services will remain unchanged.
Photos and videos deleted in Drive will not be deleted from Photos, nor will the media deleted in Photos be removed from Drive. Clearly, the media across the two services will be connected. For those wondering, photos and videos copied in Original Quality from one platform to another will count towards storage quota on both.
Meanwhile, people will still be able to use the Backup and Sync option on Windows and macOS to upload to media in High Quality as well as Original Quality. Notably, photos and videos uploaded in High Quality will not count against the user’s account storage quota. The photos and videos that users upload in Original Quality using the Backup and Sync will only be counted once towards their storage quota.
