Bad news for the (presumably few) people out there who have relied on Amazon Drive for storing their important files in the cloud: Amazon is shutting down the service. On the plus side, you’ve got well over a year to figure out an alternative and get everything moved over.
The company says Amazon Drive will no longer be supported as of December 31st, 2023. That’s when access will be completely cut off. Uploads are going away earlier and won’t be accepted as of January 31st. The Amazon Drive apps for Android and iOS will be taken down on October 31st, 2022.
“We will continue to provide customers the ability to safely back up, share, and organize photos and videos with Amazon Photos,” Amazon said in an email to customers. But for all files that aren’t images or videos, you’ll have to download them. On its FAQ page, Amazon recommends using the Amazon Photos desktop app for Windows or macOS if you’re trying to retrieve larger files. You can also go here to cancel your Drive subscription.
As for why Amazon is making the decision to sunset Drive after 11 years, the company says, “We are taking the opportunity to more fully focus our efforts on Amazon Photos to provide customers a dedicated solution for photos and video storage.” Perhaps that means Amazon has big ideas in mind for taking on Google Photos and Apple’s iCloud Photo Library. But the Drive news will definitely be a disappointment to those who grew accustomed to housing their files on Amazon’s dependable servers.