Google's Android Backup Change: What It Means for Your Phone Storage

Starting July 7, Google is changing how it counts your Android phone backups. Right now, when your Android phone automatically saves things like app data, text messages, and settings to Google's servers, that backup doesn't take up space in your free Google account storage. Beginning next month, it will.

This change applies immediately to new Android users. If you already have a Google account, the change will roll out to you over the coming months.

What's Being Counted Now

Android backups include several kinds of information: your app data (like your game progress or notes), device settings, call history, and text messages. In the past, Google only counted photos and videos you sent in text messages toward your free 15GB storage limit. Everything else in your backup was free and unlimited.

Starting July 7, all of that backup data counts toward your quota.

How Much Space Will This Take Up

Google estimates that this change will add about 40MB of storage usage for the average person. To put that in perspective, 40MB is roughly the size of a short film clip on your phone. Most people have room to spare in their free 15GB.

However, if you've owned your Android phone for many years and send lots of text messages, your backup could be larger than the average — possibly several times larger. The 40MB figure is Google's own estimate, so individual users may see different results.

What You Can Do About It

Google is adding new controls that let you choose what gets backed up. Starting now, you can go into your Android phone's backup settings and exclude call history or text messages from being backed up if you want to keep your storage usage smaller. This gives you more control than you had before.

The Bigger Picture

This isn't the first time Google has adjusted its free storage offer recently. In May, Google began testing lower free storage limits for brand new accounts — cutting the baseline from 15GB to 5GB for some people unless they verified their phone number.

Both of these moves point in the same direction. Google is making free storage less generous. Google One subscriptions, which give you extra storage, start at $2.99 a month for 100GB. When Google reduces what's free, it naturally pushes more people toward paying for extra storage.

That said, 15GB of free storage is still quite large compared to what other companies offer. For the typical person checking email, using cloud storage, and backing up photos, 15GB covers a lot of ground. The real question is whether you're someone who tends to accumulate data over many years or across multiple devices.

For people managing Android phones in a business setting — such as IT staff handling phones for employees — this change matters more. If those backup systems were set up assuming backups didn't count against storage limits, they may need to revisit those plans before the change reaches existing accounts.