Microsoft Withdraws Changes To OneDrive Photo Storage

At the beginning of September, news broke that Microsoft was making a change to the storage space calculation for OneDrive. The company informed its users that from mid-October, photos in albums will in future take up twice as much memory.

The change would affect many users

This in turn would mean that users could quickly reach their available storage limit. Why Microsoft made this decision remained unclear – the change also seemed completely nonsensical at first glance and could have drastic and expensive consequences for some users.

It just said that OneDrive’s infrastructure would be changed, so that photos that are stored in both the gallery and a user’s albums will then be counted separately against the booked storage space .

Users are complaining about this double calculation. Shortly after OneDrive automatically sent this email to users, there were numerous complaints and long discussion threads in the relevant forums.

This also seems to have arrived at Microsoft. According to the reports, Microsoft has now decided to move away from this new double regulation. Microsoft has now confirmed in a support document that the announced change will not be implemented and that the crediting of OneDrive photos and photo albums will remain as it currently is.

Update on changes to OneDrive photo albums

• On August 31, 2023, we began communicating an upcoming update to our cloud storage infrastructure that will result in a change to how OneDrive photos and photo albums count toward your total cloud storage allowance.
• This change was scheduled to roll out on October 16, 2023. Based on the feedback we received, we have adjusted our approach and will no longer be rolling out this update.
• We will maintain the current photo album experience as it is today.