Flickr May Delete Photos Tomorrow If You’re Over the New Limit

After being acquired by SmugMug from Yahoo, Flickr announced in November 2018 that it would be limiting free accounts to 1,000 photos and videos total. The major change takes effect tomorrow, and if you’re over the limit, your extra photos ~~will~~ may be permanently deleted.

Flickr has stated that after February 5th, 2019, accounts with over 1,000 photos and videos will begin to have their files deleted starting from oldest to newest until the account contains only the 1,000 most recently uploaded files.

If you’re over the limit and would like to download all your Flickr photos to prevent any from being deleted, Gizmodo notes that there are two ways you can do so.

The Camera Roll Method

Visit your Camera Roll found under the You dropdown menu in the top bar. Keep clicking Select All above groups of photos until you’ve selected about 500 shots. Finally, click Download at the bottom of the screen to create a ZIP file. When the download is packaged and ready to go, you’ll receive an alert (also found in the top menu).

The Album Method

Visit your Albums page found under the You dropdown menu in the top bar. Hover your mouse over any album and you’ll see a download icon for that album. Clicking this icon allows you to create a ZIP file for that album, which will also appear as an alert when it’s ready to go.

Note that the ZIP file may take a while to become available depending on how much data you’re cramming into it.

If you’d like to avoid the hassle and start paying for a subscription for unlimited photo and video storage, Flickr Pro costs $50/year for the annual plan or $6/month for the monthly plan (the equivalent of $72 per year).

Update on 2/5/19: Flickr has provided clarification regarding this deletion strategy. The company will not be deleting all files over the limit immediately. Here’s what a spokesperson tells PetaPixel:

We understand there has been concern over Flickr photo content since changes to our free offering were announced in November. Flickr is proud to provide a community for photographers to store and share their photos and videos, and we prefer not to delete content that matters to our customers. While current free users with over 1,000 photos and videos will become eligible for deletion starting tomorrow, users may not see any of their content deleted immediately. The first accounts to be impacted will be abandoned accounts that bear large volumes of private photos.