Key Takeaways
AT&T Photograph Storage Shuts Down February 1, 2026: Obtain Your Pictures Now to Keep away from Everlasting Loss.
Obtain Your Pictures by Requesting an Archive: AT&T Supplies ZIP Information (As much as 5GB Every).
Discover a New Backup: Google Pictures, iCloud, or USB drives are safer long-term storage options.
AT&T is shuttering its AT&T Photograph Storage service.getty
Telecom big AT&T has issued a warning to all customers of its AT&T Photograph Storage app. Simply 4 years after launch, the service will quickly shut down completely, forcing 1000’s of customers to retailer their photographs and movies elsewhere earlier than they’re completely deleted.
The service, launched in 2021, provided limitless photograph and video storage to AT&T’s Shield Benefit plan subscribers with the comfort of automated backup at full high quality and no knowledge fees when backing up over AT&T’s community. Nevertheless, AT&T is now pulling the plug, forcing customers to relocate their probably big picture libraries.
AT&T hasn’t publicly disclosed the rationale for the shutdown however as different companies (like Google Pictures) have proven, “limitless” storage gives don’t are inclined to final very lengthy, particularly after they change into well-liked.
Right here’s what’s occurring and when.
Timeline: AT&T Photograph Storage Shutdown
October 20, 2025:
AT&T Photograph Storage app customers will now not have the ability to again up information.
AT&T Photograph Storage can be faraway from app shops.
Customers will nonetheless have the ability to entry their saved media and obtain information.
February 1, 2026 – Necessary Deadline!
AT&T Photograph Storage will shut down solely.
All consumer photographs and movies can be deleted from the service
AT&T is telling customers to obtain their photographs now to keep away from deletion in 2026.AT&T/Asurion
How To Obtain Your Footage From AT&T Photograph
Fortunately, AT&T has taken steps to make it simple to obtain your photographs and movies earlier than that date. AT&T Photograph customers can obtain photographs and movies in bulk utilizing the next steps:
Signal into the AT&T Pictures internet portal and choose “Request your archive.”
You’ll then want to attend as much as 48 hours for a obtain hyperlink to be emailed to you.
Clicking on the hyperlink within the e-mail will take you to a downloads web page the place your photographs and movies can be obtainable in a sequence of zip archives, every as much as 5GB in measurement.
You could then obtain every archive individually to your laptop.
Open the zip archives with any zip app to retrieve particular person photos and add them to a different storage supplier.
What To Do With Your Downloaded AT&T Pictures And Movies
If you wish to preserve your photographs and movies secure, you’ll now want to search out another place to retailer them. If in case you have a comparatively small assortment, of lower than round 10GB, I like to recommend utilizing Google Pictures, which comes with 15GB of free storage per consumer account. It’s necessary to not fully fill your Google One account with photographs, although, as your storage allocation is shared with different companies equivalent to Gmail. If Google Pictures isn’t to your liking, there are lots of options equivalent to Apple’s iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive, pCloud and Dropbox. In the event you’re an Amazon Prime consumer, your subscription additionally contains limitless photograph storage, however keep in mind, your photograph storage is tied to your account and can finally be deleted for those who cancel Amazon Prime.
Cloud Storage Is Not Backup
If in case you have beneficial photos you wish to protect, now is a superb time to again up your downloaded ZIP information to a USB drive or exterior storage system. You may count on to pay round $100 for a good-quality 1TB instance.
Many suppliers, together with AT&T and Google, encourage prospects to make use of their companies to “again up” their photographs, however, until you retain a separate copy of your information some other place, cloud storage is totally not a backup. As AT&T has simply demonstrated, it’s not secure to depend on a cloud supplier to take care of the one copy of your photograph library.
On the whole, be cautious of any service that provides “limitless” storage of any form. Google famously discontinued its limitless Google Pictures “top quality” storage perk in 2021.
When that service is gone, so are your recollections.
Comply with @paul_monckton on Instagram.
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