Doesn’t it sound too good to be true? How is this even possible? No matter how hard it might be to believe, Google Photos is actually the solution to your phone’s low storage which might have failed you in capturing some critical moments on your camera. Announced back in May 2015, Google promises to upload and backup all of your photos you can throw at it (upto 16 Megapixels) and videos (upto 1080p Full HD) for life. Yes, for a lifetime. There is no hidden caveat or trick here, it works exactly as it sounds. And there are some amazing added benefits too. So to just to cut to the chase, the Google Photos app is available on all major platforms including Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows. You can start downloading the app from the links below while you finish through the rest of this article: Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.photos&hl=en iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-photos/id962194608?mt=8 Mac/Windows: https://photos.google.com/apps For the first time, when you open this app on your phone, you will be greeted with the initial setup which asks for your Google Account to be used for the backups. Once setup, it will start backing up all media if your phone is connected to a WiFi network. You can also enable backups over cellular data but it will incur the regular costs charged by your network provider. Now, if there are too many photos to be backup up and the battery percentage is low, the app will automatically pause the backup till the time you connect your phone to a charger and will finish uploading pictures and videos while your phone charges. To see whether a picture/video has been backup up or not, select the photo and click on the options menue (3 dots) from the top right corner. If it gives the option to delete from device, it means the file has been uploaded and you can delete the photo from your device. You can also delete all backed up up pictures by selecting “Free up space” option from the side bar. Also please make sure in the app settings that the upload size is selected as High Quality as that is the option which gives you unlimited storage, if this option is not selected, the quota will be counted against your GDrive storage. Extra Features: 1.Assistant Cards, are automatic, creative suggestions by Google to help you get the most out of your photos. If you take many pictures on a day or at a certain time, you might get suggestions to make an album with a relevant name, you also get reminders to revisit a past day by showing pictures from that day. And the best of all, you get amazing videos and GIFs that you can share over social media. (Example below 😜👇) Sharing pictures in their original resolution is also lightning fast. If you want to send pictures to someone over WhatsApp or other medium, just select the pictures from the Google Photos app and click the share button to create a sharable link, which your friends can open and download the pictures they want in original resolution. Intelligent Search, is the most standout feature that is specifically possible because of the calculations performed on Google Servers. You can search from your pictures by typing regular words and it will bring you shockingly accurate results. For example: “baby pictures”, “flowers”, “documents”, “pictures in Badshahi Mosque”. You can access all your photos/videos from any computer or browser by just opening and download any particular picture you might need in case your phone is not with you. photos.google.com Basic photo editing is also provided within the app itself and if you need to crop/rotate a picture or adjust the colors, you can do that easily by tapping the edit button in the bottom row. As you might have guessed already, you can also download the Mac/Windows app on your computer and upload all the pictures you might have taken throughout your life to have them safely backed up on Google Servers and in case your flash drive gives up or something unfortunate happens, your pictures can be easily retreived from the Google Photos web interface. So with all your media safely backup up on Google Servers, be sure to have a safe password for your account and stop worrying about your phone’s storage the next time you are out with friends 🙌 Written by: Awais Farooq Roy

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