Flickr Extends Photo Deletion Deadline to March 12 Over Technical Issues While Downloading Files

Flickr, the renowned photo sharing and storage service, was set to start deleting photos belonging to free account users who exceeded their storage quota on February 5, 2019 after asking them to back their files up. But it appears that technical issues faced by users have forced Flickr to extend the image deletion deadline to March 12, 2019. Users who have a free account now have a month's time to download their photos if their numbers exceed the 1,000 mark or upgrade to the Pro membership tier and extend their photo storage limit to 1TB.

“Based on feedback from our members and complications some members experienced when downloading photos Monday. We've decided to extend our deletion eligibility deadline”, VP of Flickr, Scott Kinzie, told USA Today. Following the revamp of its storage plans in November last year, Flickr removed the 1TB storage quota for free accounts and limited the number of photos one can store to just 1,000. Flickr originally asked users to either upgrade to the Pro tier priced at $49.99 (roughly Rs. 3,600) or delete all photos over the 1,000 limit before January 8, 2019 – a deadline that was later extended February 5, 2019.

Talking about extending of the photo deletion deadline till March 12, the Flickr executive added that the company wants to give users the necessary amount of time to choose how they want to store and protect their photos. However, he added that the new storage policy will be the same and users clearly have only two options at their disposal. It appears that the photo download tool offered by Flickr is taking longer than expected to bring up the requested zip file containing the photos users want to delete or back up from their Flickr account. Add to it the fact that Flickr's download tool lets users save zip files only in batches of 500 photos, it might be a time-consuming process for users who seek to back up thousands of photos.

Follow these steps to download your photos from Flickr before they are deleted:

1. Sign in to your Flickr account on the desktop or on the mobile site.
2. Once you're signed in, use the top menu to navigate to 'You' and go to 'Photostream'.
3. On this page, you'll see all your photos on Flickr. To select photos, click on 'Camera Roll' on the menu that appears or simply click here.
4. Now you can either select single photos by clicking on them (hold the shift key to select multiple photos). 
5. Once you've selected all your photos, you'll see a 'Download' button at the bottom of the screen.
6. Click on it and you'll notice a small pop-up that lets you create a zip file with all your photos.
7. Clicking on it will kick off the process and you'll receive a link to download the zipped file shortly. 
8. In case you missed it, it'll be visible under the bell icon on the top right-hand side on Flickr's website while you're signed in.