UA Google Photos App Retires May 31, 2025
May 2, 2025
The News: Access to the UA Google Photos app will end on May 31, 2025.
Why Does This Matter? After the May 31 deadline, you will no longer have access to any photos stored in the Google Photos app within your UA Google account.
What to Do Before May 31, 2025:
- Personal Photos (non-work related photos) - Back up or move any personal or non-work photos stored in your UA Google Photos app to your personal Google Drive account or another non-work storage option. Reminder: Personal photos should not be stored within any UA systems or devices, such as your UA Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, or on any work-related hardware or locations.
- Work-Related Photos (photos related to your job duties) - Users should transfer any Google Photos data over to their UA Google Drive storage or a similar UA-approved cloud secure storage system. Work with your supervisor to move institution photos to an appropriate location, to avoid buying extra physical storage devices.
- Work with your IT help desk to explore options and gather guidance. If you have a large library of work-related photos, work with your IT help desk to determine the ideal storage location.
What happens after May 31, 2025?
- All access to UA Google Photos will be removed.
The Big Picture: Removing Google Photos is a part of our ongoing effort to reduce UA’s Google Workspace for Education (GWE) footprint. In 2021, Google announced a new model for GWE that included an end to unlimited storage, effective July 2022. UA has been able to delay those limits, until now. We are all being asked to review our storage usage in order to reduce the university’s storage footprint and avoid additional costs.
- UA’s existing storage far exceeds Google’s new limits, and maintaining current levels of usage will incur significant costs.
- Currently, OIT and campus IT departments are working with University stakeholders across the system to reduce our overall storage footprint, including developing new storage policies and limits that are more sustainable.
- Google Storage is still one of the preferred storage locations because it is cloud based and more secure than physical storage options. Users with large amounts of data should reach out to their IT help desk to identify alternative solutions to help reduce storage costs. E.g. archiving data to AWS cold storage, which is a lower cost option than Google storage.
Need Help? If you have questions or problems, read through the Google storage project FAQs or contact your IT help desk: | |