I stopped hitting cloud storage limits for good by changing this Google Photos option

I'm not a Google One subscriber, which means I get only 15GB of free cloud storage that comes with every standard Google account.

I would've loved to get a little more for free, as that would've allowed me to store more items in cloud storage.

The free version works for me because I already have 1TB of cloud storage with my Microsoft 365 subscription. So, I store all those giant-sized files in OneDrive, and not Google Photos.

However, Google's 15GB of free cloud storage wasn't always enough for me, as I kept hitting that limit, primarily due to Google Photos. More specifically, backing up photos in Google Photos was the biggest contributor.

Ironically, the solution to this was hiding in the very same app that was causing the problem. All it took was changing one setting in Google Photos.

I stopped hitting cloud storage limits for good by changing only one Google Photos option.

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By  Prarthana Gopal

Google Photos allows users to control backup quality

But the app makes the wrong default choice for many users

I don't take many photos every day, so I don't need to back up that many shots. Still, however small the number is, they pile up over time, and your free cloud storage keeps eroding as you back up those shots in Google Photos.

You get closer to that limit faster than you think because Google Photos assumes that you want to keep the original quality of your shots in backups. The only respite is that you can change the backup quality of photos and videos in the Google Photos app.

Google Photos stores photos and videos to the cloud at original quality by default. This means photos taken with a premium phone like the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra could occupy as much as 50MB of space in your free Google Cloud storage.

You can do the math on how much space 20 such photos will occupy. 1GB of space for that small number of photos is quite a lot, especially when you have only 15GB to work with.

This is why I use the Express option for backup quality in Google Photos. It compresses photos to 3MP and videos to standard definition. Still, it's a compromise with quality, but that's the price I can afford to pay.

I select photos and videos that I want to store at original quality and then send them to OneDrive, which offers me 1TB of cloud storage. These are usually the shots that are precious to me — ones that I wouldn't want to lose at any cost.

For everything else, I don't mind compromising on quality, given how seamlessly the backup process runs in the background. Google Photos is the easiest backup method on Android, and no other platform comes anywhere close. Not even OneDrive.

However, I don't love how it assumes everyone wants to back up their photos and videos with no change and sets the Backup quality setting to Original quality. Instead, the app should prompt users to choose when they turn on the Backup toggle.

How to change Google Photos' Backup quality

It should have been a lot simpler

The Backup quality setting in Google Photos is simple, but it's difficult to spot. You need to dig deep into the settings to find it. For something this important, it should've been available in the main settings page.

For now, it requires you to open Google Photos, click the profile icon in the upper-right corner, tap Photos settings, and then Backup. If the Backup toggle is on, you'll see the Photo and video quality option in the Preferences section.

Tap the option and change it from the default Original quality to Storage saver or Express. If you want to keep your photos and videos closer to original quality, Storage saver is the best option, as it compresses photos to 16MP and videos to high-definition.

The Express option is for people like me who care more about saving cloud storage space than preserving every last detail in Google Photos. The level of compression is a bit too aggressive, but that's what I'd call the necessary evil when I have only 15GB of storage space.

I wish I had changed it sooner

I found the setting by accident and changed the default to Express immediately. But before that, I spent a lot of time manually reviewing the items in Google Photos' backup when I hit the limit, which used to happen quite a bit.

Ever since I changed it from Original quality to Express option, I haven't hit the cloud storage limit even once. I would've saved a lot of time had I found the setting sooner.

If this doesn't work in the future, I plan to build my own local backup to stop Google Photos from holding my storage hostage.