Google Photos Turns Off Backups for Third-Party Services

In an official post, Google said that the decision has been taken to save internet resources as people are sharing more photos and videos during the pandemic.

A Google employee has just confirmed that the Google Photos app will disable automatic backup & syncing of media from messaging apps.

Previously, Google's photo app would automatically upload all media saved to an iOS device, including any files saved in folders originating from social and messaging apps. Existing backups aren't affected, but going forward those messaging apps won't be backed up by default. Simply put, pictures obtained and photos captured with your phone's camera will simply remain inside the device, and not uploaded to Google's cloud.

Although the backup feature is turned off now, you can turn it back on for any services used.

Google Photos was recently given a facelift of sorts and along with it, some improvements of certain functions. We wonder why Google decided to make this change so late.

As an alternative, you can always create a local backup if you have a spare external hard drive lying around and invest in some backup software. It's a small hoop you have to jump through if you want these to sync everything to Google Photos, and I presume Google is counting on most people to ignore it.