Okay, let’s be real—paying Google every month just to store old photos and videos that barely ever get looked at? It’s getting out of hand.
Right now, it’s $10/month for 2TB of cloud storage, and based on Google’s own “storage projection,” most people are on track to need the 5TB plan (yeah, the $25/month one) within two years. That’s $250 a year just to hold onto digital memories that rarely get opened. Pretty wild.
So, finding a better, smarter solution? It’s kind of a must.
The Google Storage Trap
When you sign up for a Google account, you get 15GB of free storage. Not bad—until you realize that if you take a lot of photos, record in 4K, or save anything to Drive, that space disappears in no time.
Just one 5-minute 4K video can eat up over 1GB. Hit your limit, and Google starts locking things down—no more backups, no more emails, nothing. Then you either delete stuff you still want or… you pay up. Every. Single. Month.
Now sure, you could back everything up to a hard drive or a fancy NAS system. But that’s bulky, expensive, and doesn’t give you Google Photos perks like face recognition or built-in editing tools.
So I dug around, and guess what? I found a few 100% legal workarounds to keep using Google Photos, with unlimited storage. Let’s dive in.
Trick #1: Partner Sharing (Free and Built-In)
Google Photos has this sneaky little feature called Partner Sharing. You can find it under: Photos app → Profile → Photo settings → Sharing → Partner sharing
Here’s how it works:
- You link a second Google account (either new or old).
- Any photos or videos you take on the second account get shared with your main account.
- BUT—they don’t count against your main account’s storage!
Set it up to share All time, invite the second account, and accept the invite. Then enable auto-save so anything backed up on the second account shows up in your main account—searchable, editable, and storage-free.
Sure, you can only link one partner account at a time. But if you’re mainly backing up photos (not tons of video), this will stretch your storage a lot.
Trick #2: Compress Your Existing Photos (With One Click)
Did you originally choose “Original quality” for backups? That setting eats storage fast.
You can switch all your old uploads to the “Storage saver” format, which compresses them to save space (but keeps them looking good enough for 99% of people).
Here’s how:
- Go to photos.google.com
- Click the menu icon → Storage → Recover storage
- Tap Learn more, and boom—compress all your uploads
Heads up: this is permanent, so make sure you’re okay with the quality before doing it. But for most people? Totally worth it. You might even be able to downgrade your plan!
Trick #3: The OG Pixel Hack (Unlimited Storage Forever)
This one is next level, and yeah—it’ll cost a little upfront. But if you’re paying $10+/month for Google One, this could save you tons over time.
Here’s the deal:
- When the original Pixel (1st gen) phone launched, Google gave it unlimited photo & video backup in original quality forever.
- Google still honors that perk, even though the phone’s stuck on Android 10 and doesn’t get updates anymore.
So, I bought an OG Pixel on eBay for about $69. I’m not using it as a phone—just as a backup station. You can transfer photos from your main phone to the Pixel using Resilio Sync, a free app that syncs folders across devices.
Once the files land on the Pixel, Google Photos backs them up—unlimited and free.
How to Set It Up:
- Download Resilio Sync on both devices.
- Sync your main phone’s camera folder to the Pixel.
- On the Pixel, go to Google Photos, find that folder, and turn on backup.
Done. Every time you snap a photo, it auto-syncs to the Pixel and uploads to your Google Photos account with unlimited storage. Boom.
Bonus Tips:
- Keep your Pixel plugged in somewhere at home.
- Disable battery optimization for Resilio so it runs in the background.
- Works with iPhones too!
So yeah, I’m now legally rocking unlimited Google Photos storage and no longer sending Google $10 every month for something I barely use.
Whether you use the partner-sharing trick, compress your old uploads, or go full-on OG Pixel hack mode like I did, you can seriously stretch or eliminate your cloud storage bill.
