Previously, backing up your phone’s gallery usually meant either subscribing to cloud storage or manually transferring everything via a USB cable to a computer or external storage.

Android is finally getting a built-in feature for automatically backing up your gallery to a Windows PC without sending your photos and videos through the cloud. Based on Google’s official November system services release notes, this feature is arriving through Google Play services version 26.43 and relies on Quick Share to transfer photos and videos.

Google is focusing on local backups

And it couldn’t have arrived at a better time

Prior to this, you could always copy your photos from your Android to a PC using a USB cable or send selected files through Quick Share. The problem was that both methods required you to remember to do it. For me, that’d usually happen once I’d already discovered some of the gallery was missing and it was too late. Google Photos solved that issue with its automatic upload feature, but only gave you 15GB on Drive for free.

At the same time, Microsoft seems to be moving in the opposite direction. The company recently removed Windows 11’s direct PC-to-PC migration option and began directing users toward Windows Backup, which depends heavily on OneDrive and offers only 5GB of free storage. Google is now giving Windows users an automatic local backup option just as Microsoft tries to make avoiding the cloud more difficult.

Moreover, the update turns Quick Share into something closer to a background backup service rather than a tool you deliberately open. It should also appeal to people who’ve considered leaving Google Photos over privacy concerns. While it’s possible to use encrypted alternatives to keep photos hidden even from the company storing them, you still have to store the files on someone else’s servers. Quick Share automatically keeps the backup on your own hardware and eliminates the monthly storage bill. That is, of course, if you have enough local storage to begin with.