Why are the new photos still not taking up space?

With the arrival of June, a huge change has taken place in the popular Google Photos service. As of June 1, 2021, Google stopped offering unlimited free photo storage.

All uploaded files have started to count to 15 GB of capacity, which is available for free. Many users have been preparing for this for a long time, some even reaching for alternatives. June came and a very strange thing happened.

Gradual deployment

As AndroidPolice has pointed out, some Google Photos users have noticed that photos and videos are still not included in their free capacity. Of the available 15 GB, they simply did not cut anything, even though it should have been.

It turned out to be no mistake. Google has officially explained that the reason behind this is that the new terms are being put into practice gradually. For some accounts, the limit applies immediately from June 1, for others it has not yet come.

While it’s not known exactly when the new Google Photos behavior will be extended to all user accounts, there’s no need to look forward to it. The whole thing is only temporary and gradually everyone will come to the fore. It is a matter of the very near future, so you need to put your repositories in order anyway.

Delayed update

But Google also provides another possible explanation. There may be a response when processing uploaded files. This means that the capacity usage report has not been updated shortly after the files were saved.

From the user’s point of view, it looks like the uploaded files do not take up any space. After a while, however, the used capacity will be updated and the correct information will be displayed, when it will be clear that the files still take up space.

Great care must be taken with this possible delay, especially when uploading a larger amount of data. Google may indicate that the storage still has free space available, but the upload process will be canceled because, in reality, this will not be the case. There is only a delay behind all this.

Alternative services

If you fill up your Google Photos storage, you have several options. You will either subscribe to more storage or upload your photos to another service where you will have plenty of free space. We have summarized the list of the best alternatives in the article Google Photos: We choose the best alternatives for backing up photos.