Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google Photos could soon introduce a new feature allowing users to back up only their favorite photos and videos.
- This feature could provide a middle ground between full auto-backup and manual selection, saving storage space.
Google Photos is a great photo editing and media management app. I have a Google One subscription, so I turn on Google Photos cloud backup on all my devices, which automatically backs up every photo and video I take. It’s a handy way to ensure I always have a copy of my favorite memories, but it takes up a lot of storage. If you want to be more mindful of what you back up to Google Photos, Google could soon add a way to restrict backups to only favorites.
An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
Currently, Google offers two ways to back up photos in Google Photos. The most popular option is to turn on backups for all your photos and videos and forget about them, as everything will be backed up. This works out for users who either have a lot of available Google One storage or click so few photos and videos that they aren’t bothered by the meagre 15GB free online storage.
Alternatively, users can turn off auto-backup and selectively back up individual photos and videos. When auto-backup is off, Google Photos presents a “Back up now” toast. Tapping on it backs up the media. This gives the user complete control over what to back up.
AssembleDebug / Android Authority
While the idea is neat, this level of control doesn’t work well if you click a lot of photos and videos, as you’d have to individually select every single media to backup.
To potentially solve for this, Google Photos v7.39 includes strings that indicate that users will soon be able to turn on cloud backups for only their favorites:
Code
<string name="photos_autobackuppromos_backupfavorites_title">Automatically back up only your favorites</string>
<string name="photos_autobackuppromos_backupfavorites_enable_button_text">Turn on favorites backup</string>
<string name="photos_autobackuppromos_backupfavorites_description">Keep your favorites safe by automatically backing up photos when you favorite them</string>As the description makes it clear, users will soon be able to turn on online backups for their favorites. When the feature is turned on, any photos that they favorite will be backed up, while the rest of their photo library will not be backed up and remain on their device.
The strings don’t explicitly mention video within the scope for favorites backup, but logically, we can expect the functionality to extend to videos too.
Google has yet to announce the ability to restrict backups to favorites within Google Photos. We’ll keep you updated when we learn more.
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