Material Gallery is essentially Google Slides for designers wanting to upload mockups and screenshots for collaborative feedback. Google is now moving Material Gallery’s backend to Google Photos early next year.

An email to users today touts how “Gallery will now have the dependability of the Google Photos infrastructure for Gallery file upload and storage.” Google says this will provide a “more consistent and reliable service” but means that content uploaded to Gallery will be reflected in the Photos storage quota. All users get 15GB free, and 100GB starts at $1.99/month with One storage plans up to 30TB available.

After this date, all uploads to Gallery (images, videos, etc.) will be stored in the project owner’s Google Photos account and may count against Google Account storage. Existing Gallery files will not count against Google Account storage, but may be migrated to Google Photos in the future.

While using the same infrastructure and storage quota, Gallery uploads will not be appearing in Google Photos as that would disruptively mix a user’s personal and work content. In the immediate future, this change only applies to new content being added to the tool. However, that might change in the future.

As a benefit, Google notes that this move will allow developers to upload videos to projects on Gallery.io.

This change goes into effect on January 16, 2021, when there will be “approximately 6 hours of downtime.” As this migration is scheduled for next month, the “High Quality” upload tier will still provide free storage.

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Thanks RKBDI!