Google Ends Drive And Photos Sync, Brings New Features

It is common for you to store photos and videos on Google Photos and Google Drive. Doing so, you can access the photos and videos easily and these will be safe as well. As connection between both these services are confusing for many users, the company has come up with a move that will be effective from next month.

Google has announced that it will simplify the experience across Photos and Drive. Starting from July, new photos and videos on Drive will not be shown in Photos automatically. Likewise, the content on the Photos app will not be added to the Photos folder available in Google Drive. Thankfully, the photos and videos you delete in Drive will still be intact in the Photos app and vice versa. This move will prevent the accidental deletion of content across the two products.

'Upload From Drive' Feature

Many users prefer a more granular control when it comes to copying photos and videos to Photos from Drive. To make this possible, the company has introduced a new feature called 'Upload from Drive' in photos.google.com. This will let you choose photos and videos manually from Drive. The other feature is 'Shared with Me' that includes media files to import into Photos. As these media files will not be synced across both products, when you copy them in original quality, there will be an impact on your storage quota.

Existing Photos And Videos Remain In Both Apps

As mentioned above, this change is only for the new photos and videos. The existing media content you have already uploaded from Drive to Photos will remain. If you have the Google Photos folder in your Drive, then you can no longer update the same automatically.

And the 'Backup and Sync' feature on Windows and Mac will still continue to work. You can use it to upload original quality photos to both products.

Why This New Move?

Google claims that it aims to simplify some features that caused confusion for the users. And, based on its own research and feedback from users, Google has come up with these changes to Drive and Photos. It will come up with more changes in the future to simplify the user experience further.