One of the great things about Google Photos is that you are able to sync all your content across various devices. Despite the looming deadline of June 1 when users will not get unlimited per se, it’s still a pretty popular photo storage app. During the Google I/O conference, they announced some new features including a password-protected Locked Folder, which seemed to excite some people. However, there seems to be a limitation to this feature that Google didn’t actually announce.
If you missed the big announcement, Google Photos gets a Locked Folder where you can store photos and videos that you don’t want other people seeing when they scroll through your app or your device. It’s protected by biometric authentication, either through your fingerprint or through a passcode. You can put images, videos, or even documents inside that folder for safekeeping, no matter what the reason.
But what Google failed to mention is that this feature is only available locally. As per XDA Developers, the Locked Folder feature will not be synced across all your devices unlike the photos and videos that you normally store there. When you move your items to the Locked folder from your Google Photos library, they will be deleted from the cloud storage and from then on they will be in the locked storage only.
Sometimes it will take a bit longer for the items to disappear from all your synced devices but they will eventually disappear permanently. The bad thing about this is that if you lose your smartphone where the Locked Folder is, the items inside that will disappear forever as well. So unless you backed them up separately in another cloud storage service, you most likely will not be able to retrieve them.
We don’t know if this will change eventually but for now, that’s what the Locked Folder will do. This feature will first be available in Pixel devices and eventually come to Android devices later this year.
