Invisible Samsung Gallery backups could be wasting your Galaxy phone storage

Samsung Galaxy phone users who take every opportunity to snap photos, record videos, and edit them will run out of valuable storage faster than everyone else. Videos can get ridiculously large, but that's not the only reason. You might also be wasting a lot of storage because of how Samsung Gallery backups work.

Every time you edit a photo or video in Samsung Gallery, you create a hidden backup copy of the original. These are called “pre-edit backups” and can't be accessed inside the Gallery app unless you undo an earlier edit and restore the original version.

Furthermore, if you transfer your data from one Galaxy phone to another using Smart Switch, those invisible copies come along too. You could have invisible backups from several generations of Samsung Galaxy phones taking up storage on your brand-new device.

The good news is that you can delete these invisible pre-edit backups and reclaim that storage.

Pre-edit backups are original copies of your edited photos and videos kept safe by your Samsung phone. Their only purpose is to let you restore an edited photo or video to its original state, even after you've saved your edits.

Deleting these pre-edit backups won't delete the photos and videos in Samsung Gallery. In a way, it's like getting free storage back, potentially a lot of it. If you edit photos and videos frequently, these backups can consume gigabytes of storage over time.

A word of caution: If you think you might want to undo some of your edits in the future and restore the original versions, don't delete the associated pre-edit backup files.

You can't access pre-edit backups through the Samsung Gallery app. Device Care is the way.

If you don't see a suggestion to review pre-edit backups on the Device Care > Storage screen, it means your phone doesn't have any pre-edit backups stored.

Note: The screenshots above were captured on the Galaxy Z Fold 8's main screen, which uses One UI's tablet layout. Your UI will look a little different if you're accessing these menus on a slab-type Galaxy phone or a Fold's cover screen. However, the steps are essentially the same on both phones and Galaxy Tabs.

The interface may also be different if you're an older version of One UI, as you can see in the screenshots below.