Google has announced a new feature for Google Photos that is called “Undo backup”. The feature works rather straightforwardly – it allows you to delete your cloud backups without losing the files stored on your devices. The update with this feature is now rolling out to iOS users and will soon roll out to Android users as well.
The announcement is all about giving you more control over photo storage and more flexibility with your backed-up things. The ‘Undo backup’ feature will remove all photos and videos from Google Photos in the cloud, but they will safely remain on your device.
This update will help people who want to clear cloud storage without having to risk data loss.
To use this feature, you have to open the Google Photos app. Once there, you can tap on your profile picture or initials at the top, go to Google Photos settings, and then select the Backup option. There, you can scroll to find the ‘Undo backup for this device’ option.
Once you tap it, you’ll be greeted by a confirmation screen with a checkbox that confirms your understanding that photos and videos will be removed from Google Photos but will remain on your device.
After you confirm, select “Delete Google Photos backup’ and the process will start. As we already mentioned, the photos will stay on your device, and only their copies in the cloud will be deleted. This will also stop backups from happening on the device further without affecting the local files. I think this feature is incredibly useful to people who rely a lot on cloud storage and need to declutter it sometimes. It also ensures that freeing up storage on the cloud doesn’t mean getting rid of things on your device.
Right now, iOS users can take advantage of the feature and Android users will have to wait for a bit to get it. The rollout for Android users is coming soon though.