Clearer language, but no functional changes
Google Photos isn’t the only game in town when it comes to managing your photos — there are plenty of alternatives, and many Android phones ship with their own gallery apps. But the reason most people use Google’s offering over the competition, aside from perhaps the clever image search feature, is how easy it is to back up photos and videos to the cloud and access them on any device. Right now, Google is taking some steps to double down on that ease of use, tweaking its terminology so you understand exactly what’s going on with your backups.
You will find this new language in the application by opening it Photo settings menu — at the very top, what used to say “Backup & Sync” now simply reads “Backup”. If you open this menu, you’ll find another change near the bottom: the option that used to be labeled “Transfer Size” now shows “Backup Quality” instead, and the associated submenu also has a tweaked title.
Google says it made these changes to clear up potential confusion — functionally, there’s absolutely no difference between the renamed options and their older counterparts. While “sync” was an indication of the app’s ability to display your photo library on other devices, it technically didn’t sync the original files to any other device, only the cloud, so removing the word is really more accurate.
The change from “Transfer Size” to “Backup Quality” is also technically more correct considering you can only choose between “Storage Saver” and “Original Quality” and not a specific file size. Google Photos on the web never had a “Backup & Sync” option, but the new phrase “Backup Quality” is used instead of “Transfer Size” when accessing your settings in the online version.
In case you’re not already using this feature, you should know that backing up is incredibly easy and synchronize your pictures and videos to Google Photos — even if you just want to manually upload a few files. Just keep in mind that backups now count against your Google Account storage limit, unless you’re transferring from an OG Google Pixel.