Backing up everything isn't always smart. Why doesn't Google Photos know that?

I have a deep appreciation for Google Photos. It’s one of the company’s few apps that I’d feel naked without. Foregoing a service that automatically backs up my memories in the background? I couldn’t bear the thought! However, and rather ironically, its insistence on indiscriminately backing up every image I snap is problematic.

I took plenty of long, high-quality, high-frame-rate videos over the holidays with my new favorite camera phone, many of which exceeded a gigabyte. Google storage isn’t infinite. I upgraded to the 200GB tier several years ago to broaden my buffer, but even this is proving too meager. So, when Photos decided to start backing up these videos — many of which I don’t hold dear and don’t need mirrored in the cloud — it got me thinking: why can’t I tell Photos “don’t upload this”?

Part of Google Photos’ utility is its seamless background backup service. I snap a pic, and a few minutes later it’s copied to a secondary, safe location. It’s a core part of my backup strategy, and serves millions of users in the same way every day. But as it chugs along largely unmonitored in the background, it often gets itself into trouble.

Google Photos backs up everything in the DCIM folder — the default Digital Camera Images folder that houses all the images you snap and videos you record. Modern phones hold far more than the 15GB of free data Google gifts its users, so it’s essential that we’re allowed to choose which files occupy this space. In simpler terms, I want to tell Photos if I don’t want a file backed up, but we’re in 2026, and there’s still no sensible way to do this.

The problem is obvious, but where is the fix?

This isn’t an insurmountable problem, though. An easy GUI solution would be to include a simple “Don’t backup this” button for each photo and video. This would allow users to cherry-pick which items Photos should ignore without affecting any other files.

Photos could add a visual indicator to these ignored videos and images (a small icon, a slight fade effect, or something similar) to warn users that these files are excluded from the backup. And to aid users even further and ensure that files are not lost in the Photos mire, the app could bundle these files into a Collection.

At the very least, Photos should offer users an alert triggered by a file-size threshold. If it’s about to back up a large video, I’d appreciate a notification with an option to continue or dismiss the process. Google would get bonus points for making this threshold user-adjustable, too.

Workarounds are not solutions

I’d be remiss to suggest that there is absolutely no way to stop files from backing up to Photos, but these are clumsy workarounds rather than seamless solutions.

As Photos automatically backs up videos and images in the DCIM folder, you can move the files you don’t want backed up to a separate folder. It’s a practical solution, but it’s too frictional. It involves opening a file manager, picking or creating a new folder, finding the file, and cutting and pasting it to its new location.

The other left-field solution I’ve stumbled across is using the Locked Folder feature. As its name suggests, the folder hides sensitive images and videos from the main gallery, but users can choose whether to back it up. As it’s part of the Photos app, you don’t require a file manager. If you don’t have any items you want to keep from prying eyes, the Locked Folder doubles as a makeshift anti-backup tool. Would I recommend this method? No, especially since I’d almost definitely forget I have anything in this folder in the first case.

Admittedly, neither of these solutions is viable, which is why Photos’ backup system needs reform.

Google Photos gets plenty of love from the company’s development team. While the option to “TikTok-ify” videos on the platform sounds like a hoot, I’d also appreciate more practical additions from time to time. One of these is more control over backed-up files.

Since Photos no longer offers unlimited storage, making the most of your cloud storage is essential. This makes a “Don’t backup this” button so important for me, but even more essential for those still on the meager free tier.