Microsoft realizes new OneDrive photos storage policy isn't all that good, backtracks

Microsoft, earlier this year, made a change to its OneDrive Storage quota policy which led to problems as unsuspecting users found themselves unable to send and receive emails. That's because Outlook attachments and inline images had now become part of the 5GB quota.

More recently, the company announced another update to its Storage quota policy wherein photos uploaded on OneDrive will be counted twice. To compensate for that, the tech giant was also willing to offer a storage bonus as well though it would expire after a year.

In an email explaining the change, Microsoft wrote:

Microsoft is committed to improving your Microsoft 365 experience, and we want to let
you know about an upcoming change to the OneDrive photos storage infrastructure.
Soon, data from photos saved in your Gallery and in your albums will each count
separately against your total Microsoft storage quota. This change will gradually roll out
across accounts starting on October 16, 2023.

This change may affect how much storage you have available. If you are over your
storage limit, you will not be able to save new files to OneDrive, sync files to OneDrive,
and send or receive emails in Outlook.com. To help you avoid such interruption, we are
granting you a one-time storage bonus that will take effect when the data change is
applied to your account. This storage bonus is free of charge and will expire one year
after the date of issue.

However, perhaps seeing how the previous policy change for Outlook attachments did not go so smoothly, and also from customer feedback, Microsoft has decided to backtrack and has stated that it is no longer going to proceed with this alteration. It writes:

Update on changes to OneDrive photo albums

On August 31, 2023, we began to communicate an upcoming update to our cloud storage infrastructure that would result in a change in how OneDrive photos and photo albums data is counted against your overall cloud storage quota.

This change was scheduled to start rolling out on October 16, 2023. Based on the feedback we received, we have adjusted our approach, we will no longer roll out this update.

We will maintain the current photo album experience, as it is today.

You can view it on this support page on Microsoft's website.