Google Photos update lets you free up space, downgrade photos

Out of Google’s annual event this year, Google Photos, bundled out of the underwhelming Google+ was an impressive innovation. Over the months since its launch it has served users well. To follow up on that success, Google Photos is today receiving an update.

The latest update to Google Photos brings features to the Google Photos app, SD-card enabled devices and the web.

Google Photos users on the web will now be able to downgrade photos from original quality to high quality. This feature downgrades already uploaded photos from original quality to high quality. This can be done by visiting the Google Photos settings page from a computer and click ‘recover storage’. As it is now, users can choose to upload original images but these photos, because they are not compressed, take up a lot of space on the free storage and count against a user’s Google storage quota. High quality photos will help save users storage as these photos don’t count against a user’s Google storage quota.

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Google Photos app is receiving a new feature too, in the form of the Free Up Space button. Users can use this button to delete images in bulk. Google says that this feature will help users bulk-delete copies of images that have already been backed up to their storage. This does sound risky but users can double-confirm the action to ensure that they do not lose precious photos.

The feature will also use push notifications in the form of Assistant cards. The cards will notify users when they are nearing their storage limit on their devices. The assistant cards will now be sent not only to users backing their images at original quality but to every users who is nearing their storage limit.

Another feature that is coming to mobile is the ability to delete photos from SD-card enabled devices. According to Google, users have been having issues with photos that continue to show up in the Photos view even after being deleted.