Google wants to prevent Photos on iPhones from saving unlimited heic photos

The ability for users of recent iPhones to store photos online in unlimited heic format via Google’s Photos app is a bug, according to Google. The company is working on a fix to counter this.

Google reports to Android Police that it is aware of the “problem” and is working on a way to fix it. It is not known how Google will tackle it and when the fix will appear. Last week, Reddit user stephenvsawyer reported that by default, the Photos app on iPhones can store unlimited images in original quality.

This is possible because iPhones from iOS 11 save images in the heic or heif file format and Photos does not count this against the online storage quota. Reddit users pointed out that it would even be inefficient for Google to compress the images to jpeg, as the file size would increase while the quality decreases.

The news came at an unfortunate time for Google, as the Pixel 4 smartphones the company announced last week don’t save images in original quality. This wasn’t the case with the cheaper Pixel 3a and 3a XL either, but with previous generations of Pixel, unlimited original-quality photo storage was one of the benefits Google advertised. The Pixel 4 instead offers unlimited “high quality” online storage.