Photos in OneDrive albums are not counted extra towards the storage limit

Microsoft is abandoning its change to OneDrive that would make photos in albums count extra toward the storage limit. This would cause photos in albums to take up twice as much space as they do now. The exact reason behind the cancellation of the update is not known.

Initially, the update would be rolled out on October 16. In an overview of recent and upcoming updates for Microsoft’s cloud storage, however, the company writes that it is abandoning the change in response to ‘received feedback’. Microsoft does not elaborate further on the content of the feedback in the message.

Microsoft promised in early September that it would give OneDrive users extra storage space for a year. This was to prevent customers from exceeding their limit due to the now canceled change. Tech journalist Martin Brinkmann points out that Microsoft did not clarify whether the photos would be saved twice after the change, so once on OneDrive itself and once in the albums.

Photos on OneDrive are always stored in a central gallery, but users can also organize those photos into albums. With the update that would apply from October 16, Microsoft would also count those organized photos in albums towards the user’s total storage. However, photos in the central gallery cannot be deleted without also deleting the photos in albums. The album feature would therefore place an additional storage burden on users and make them more likely to exceed their storage limit. Now that Microsoft is no longer implementing the announced change, those images in albums will not count extra towards the storage limit.