For a few weeks now, Google has been updating your Photos app with a change that will probably go unnoticed until you find yourself searching for something that is no longer there. The trash can, that safety cushion for the images that you delete by mistake or that you later reconsider, will have much less room for maneuver: 60 days to 30 days for photos backed up to the cloud.
Until now, any photo you uploaded to Google Photos and then moved to the trash, it stayed there for two months before being deleted forever. Photos that only lived on the phone's local storage already had the 30-day limit, so in practice Google is equating both cases towards the shorter term, not the other way around.
An adjustment that has already begun to be notified
The company updated its support documentation earlier this month to reflect the new limit, and now Android users are starting to receive notices within the app itself warning of the change. It is not a complete surprise: a few weeks ago traces of this modification had already been found hidden in the application code, so Google had been preparing the ground for some time.
Thirty days is still a reasonable time frame to decide if you really want to recover that blurry screenshot or duplicate photo. The problem is another: it is, bluntly, a cut in serviceand those kinds of changes rarely generate enthusiasm among those who pay for their insurance plan. Google One. There's no big announcement or detailed explanation of why—some server space, perhaps—just a discreet note in the fine print.
The truth is that very few people check their trash regularly, and cutting the period in half increases the risk of losing it forever. some important photo without realizing it in time.
