
Since June 1, 2021, however, they do count for the full uncompressed size. In the past, these photos were not compressed, but also not counted toward used storage. Important : It seems that photos from many cameras are NOT compressed when uploaded with setting "Storage saver" due to the presence of an MPF flag ( CIPA Multi-Picture Format ) which stores multiple sizes of a photo into a single JPEG file. High-quality videos will suffer from compression. Save the photos/videos you want to keep in original size somewhere else before you use this option.

See example in this album (no longer correct for Google One users) It seems that G oogle One accounts do not show the "Recover storage" button, but you can still get there by toggling between Original and Storage saver settings. " Recover storage " on converts ALL (it's all or nothing) photos/videos uploaded with setting "Original" to the former "High Quality" - now called "Storage saver." See Delete from Google Photos but not from mobile device WARNING: Deleting from Google Photos may also delete the device copy.

Also note that deleting items uploaded with setting "Hi gh quality" before Jwill not recover any storage, because these photos do not use any. You can d elete items in Google Photos (and trash!), but there are many complaints that it may take very long before the storage is recovered.
