Google's killer new feature can free up space on your smartphone in seconds

16GB iPhone owners rejoice! Google Photos can now free up storage in seconds

GOOGLE has announced a brand-new feature which will appeal to anyone with limited storage on their smartphone.

 

Google has introduced a new space-saving feature to its hugely popular Google Photos service.

The updated Photos app now allows smartphone owners to quickly downgrade the quality of any photos they have previously backed-up in full resolution.

That means you won't need to worry about inadvertently deleting your only copy of a particular photo.

For Google Photos users with 16GB iPhones or Android smartphones – this is a major update.

 



The new space-saving Google feature rolled out to web users earlier this week



The new space-saving Google feature rolled out to web users earlier this week and is available in an app update for Android users.

Those struggling with a 16GB iPhone will have to wait for the update, later this month.

On mobile apps, there will be a new Free Up Space button in the settings menu that deletes and downgrades any backed-up snaps.

 

Tapping this button could quickly free up gigabytes of internal storage on your smartphone or tablet.

Android owners will also have the ability to ditch any photos stored on their device’s SD card – so they can quickly free up space on their external storage, too.

All of the high resolution versions of your photographs are still accessible – and can be downloaded – from Google's servers whenever you are connected to mobile internet or home wifi.

Google Photos has 100 million monthly active users, who have uploaded some 50 billion photos.

 



Google sorts your photos by date – a quick pinch-to-zoom cycles between weeks, months and years



One of the features that makes the cloud-backup photo solution so popular is the ability to back up an unlimited number of images in High Quality mode, which means only images over 16 megapixels are compressed.

Google does allow you to backup uncompressed full resolution images, but these will eat into your available Google Drive storage.

"Running out of space on your phone is the worst," Google announced on Twitter.

"You’re stuck constantly deleting apps, music, and pictures, just to make room for one more photo or video.

"Today, we’re making it easy to free up space on your phone, anytime you need."

Free up space is rolling out now on Android and coming soon to iOS. We see you, 16GB phone users.

— Google Photos (@googlephotos) November 17, 2015

Google launched its Photos service, earlier this year.

The US search firm's Photos cloud-based service is a hassle-free (not to mention, completely free) way to back-up your entire photo collection to the cloud.

The app – which is available on Apple's iOS, Android and online – automatically groups and categorises your images according to location, time and people in the photos.

 

Photos can continuously upload and back-up your images to the cloud

This allows you to quickly search through a lifetime of photos and videos with a personalised Google Search bar.

Google analyses your images – and can recognise inanimate objects, animals and people without you having to add a single deception or tag to the photographs.

The Photos app can continuously upload and back-up your images to the cloud.

 

Similar to Auto-Awesome on Google Plus, the Google Photos app will group together pictures it believes fit together into a simple GIF animation.

It can also build montage videos and slideshows – complete with a soundtrack and transitions.

These can be tweaked from within the app and then shared to other social networking websites.