Explained: Xiaomi to discontinue Cloud Gallery Sync feature, and what this means for users – Times of India

Google, Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi are among various smartphone makers that offer their proprietary cloud service to their users. The Chinese smartphone maker has now announced that the Xiaomi Cloud service will no longer support the Gallery Sync feature for global users in the upcoming days. However, this service might continue working for the company’s domestic market (China). Xiaomi has not revealed the exact date when this feature will be discontinued but the company is expected to end it before the end of 2022.

What is Xiaomi Cloud’s Gallery Sync feature
Just like Apple’s iCloud and Google Cloud, Xiaomi also allows its users to store important data like notes, photos, contacts and more on its cloud storage platform. The Gallery Sync feature in Xiaomi Cloud helps users to sync their photos and videos stored in a device’s Gallery with the cloud. This Xiaomi Cloud feature offers 5GB of free space to all users.

Gallery Sync feature to be discontinued: What it means for users
Existing Xiaomi users who already use the Gallery Sync feature need not worry as the company will allow users to back up and migrate their data to Google Photos. The smartphone maker has partnered with Google to store photos and videos for existing users to access them.
For the safety of the content, Xiaomi has also promised a convenient way for users to migrate the existing Gallery Sync content to Google Photos. The company will even allow users to download their Xiaomi Cloud data to their PCs and local devices.

However, Xiaomi has mentioned that the Google Photos migration window and the data download options will be closed in 2023. After that, all the remaining Gallery data saved on Xiaomi Cloud will get permanently deleted.
Apart from this, the company will also cancel all Xiaomi Cloud memberships and users who have already paid for the service will be issued a full refund. Meanwhile, users can continue using other features of the Xiaomi Cloud storage like contacts, messages and notes storage.