Amazon Drive is shutting down in 2023, no impact to Amazon Photos

In an email to customers this morning, Amazon announced that its “Drive” cloud storage service is shutting down at the end of 2023.

The service launched in March of 2011 as a “secure cloud storage service for Amazon customers to back up their files.” Customers were given 5GB of free storage with apps for Android, iOS, and the web.

The retailer is alerting users that have “files stored on Amazon Drive that are not supported by Amazon Photos.” Amazon made clear today that it’s not shutting down its Apple or Google Photos competitor, and that this Drive deprecation is meant to “more fully focus our efforts on photos and video storage with Amazon Photos.” Stored pictures and videos should already be available in Amazon Photos.

We will continue to provide customers the ability to safely back up, share, and organize photos and videos with Amazon Photos.

On January 31, 2023, Amazon Drive will no longer support new uploads. Starting December 31, 2023, users will no longer be able to view or download old content, and you’re advised to download local copies before then:

Step-by-step instructions for downloading your files, managing your paid subscription, and resources for additional help can be found on our FAQ page.

There might be an issue this morning accessing amazon.com/clouddrive/all. Using the link included in the email might provide better luck.

Additionally, if you are having trouble downloading your files due to size limitations we recommend using the Amazon Photos Desktop app to download and save your files. To download more than 5 GB/1,000 files at a time:

It feels rather unprecedented for a company to shut down something as basic as cloud storage in this day and age, even if usage is low.