What you need to know
- Microsoft announced a major change that would affect OneDrive's storage quota policy.
- The update would count images that appear within a gallery and albums counted separately against the user's storage quota, ultimately taking up at least twice the space.
- Users received the announced change with a lot of resentment, despite Microsoft's one-time storage bonus to mitigate the disruptions which would expire within a year.
- Microsoft has backtracked the change due to feedback received from users.
- The update won't roll out to users on October 16, 2023, and users will continue to enjoy their current photo album experience.
Last month, Microsoft announced a major change coming to OneDrive that would effectively lower the user's storage limit. It would see images featured in the gallery and album as separate entities against Microsoft's total storage quota, ultimately taking up at least twice the space.
The change was received with a lot of resentment from users, despite Microsoft's free one-time storage bonus which would expire after a year. This is mainly because the update would negatively impact the user's storage. The company further highlighted that the user would be unable to save new files to OneDrive, sync files to OneDrive, or send or receive emails through Outlook after exceeding their storage limit.
Microsoft was set to roll out this change to users on October, 16, 2023, but this is no longer the case according to a spot by Neowin. The company quietly issued a statement backtracking the change. It further highlighted that its decision was based on the feedback received from concerned users.
On August 31, 2023, we began to communicate an upcoming update to our cloud storage infrastructure that would result in a change in how OneDrive photos and photo albums data is counted against your overall cloud storage quota. This change was scheduled to start rolling out on October 16, 2023. Based on the feedback we received, we have adjusted our approach, we will no longer roll out this update. We will maintain the current photo album experience, as it is today.
Microsoft
More changes are on the way
Beside backtracking this change, Microsoft recently announced the biggest update to OneDrive in years. In the next couple of months, a Fluent redesign, an AI Copilot system, offline mode, and more are expected to ship to OneDrive.
