Whether you're a pro photographer or just enjoy snapping photos with your phone, Google Photos is a must. It's one of the best services Google currently offers and is a great way to save your pictures and videos in the cloud, access them from all of your devices, and keep them with high-quality backups. If you need some help getting started with Google Photos, you've come to the right place.
How to back up your photos and videos to Google Photos
If you're just opening Google Photos on your phone for the first time, this is the initial setup process you'll go through.
1. Open Google Photos on your phone.
2. Tap your profile pic in the upper-right corner.
3. Select Turn on backup.
4. Choose between Original quality and Storage saver and hit Confirm.
Before confirming the quality of images and videos that you'd like to upload to Photos, know that your basic Google account storage is 15GB. That free storage is inclusive of all Google services such as Google Drive.
If you have a lot of files, you'll need to purchase the Google One paid subscription plan to expand your Google Photos and overall account cloud storage.
How to choose device folders in Google Photos
You might want to choose which folders on your phone you want to back up to Google Photos. Here's how you can select specific device folders to back up and sync in Google Photos.
1. Open the Google Photos app.
2. Tap your profile picture in the top right corner.
3. Select Photos settings.
4. Hit Back up & sync.
6. Tap Back up device folders at the bottom.
7. Enable the toggle for whichever folders you want.
How to change image quality in Google Photos
Last but certainly not least, it's important to choose the quality of image backups you want for Google Photos. You can no longer save an unlimited number of pictures in "high quality" sadly, so you need to be frugal when selecting the quality of your backups.
1. Open Google Photos on your phone.
2. Press your profile picture in the upper-right corner.
3. Select Photos settings.
4. Tap Back up & sync.
5. Select Upload size and choose either Original quality or Storage saver.
There you have it. With those few things out of the way, you're now ready to start using Google Photos like a champ!
Our top equipment picks
(opens in new tab)
(opens in new tab)