Google recently started giving users more granular control over which apps should be included in the Android backups. Now, the company is bringing another policy update, and this time, it’s changing how Android backup data affects your Google cloud storage. All backup data, including SMS, call history, and device settings, will now count towards your Google Account storage.
Android backup data will soon count toward Google Account storage
For some context, until now, Android backups would only count images and videos uploaded to Google Photos and multimedia messages (MMS), including photos and videos sent through text messages, toward your Google Account storage of 15GB. SMS conversations and call logs did not count toward your storage quota.
Well, that is now changing. 9to5Google reports that, starting July 7th, Google is rolling out a policy update that makes all data types listed in Android backup settings count toward your storage limits. That includes SMS messages, call history, and device settings. These will use a small portion of your available space alongside your photos, videos, and other things.
More control to users
A positive takeaway from all this is that it won’t have a huge impact on storage. Google says that this new change should only increase the backup size by around 40MB on average. So most users wouldn’t even notice this. Google is also offering more control to users. There are new on/off toggles for SMS and MMS messages, call history, and device settings in the backup page. If you don’t want to back up any particular data type, simply turn off the relevant toggle.
You can access this page on your Pixel phone by heading to Settings > Accounts and backup > Google Backup > Other device data. The new policy change is rolling out for new Android backup users and will eventually come to existing accounts.
The post Google Will Start Counting Android Backups Toward Your Cloud Storage: The New Policy appeared first on Android Headlines.
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