How long do deleted photos and files stay in the cloud?

Thirty days. Google Photos, Google Drive, Gmail, iCloud Photos, iCloud Drive, a personal OneDrive, the free and Plus Dropbox plans and the Samsung Gallery recycle bin all keep a deleted item for 30 days, and after that each provider says it cannot be restored. The longer windows belong to paid business plans: 93 days for a work or school OneDrive, and 180 or 365 days on the higher Dropbox plans. The clock starts when you delete the item, not when you notice it is missing, and emptying the trash ends it on the spot.

Google Photos now keeps deleted photos for 30 days, not 60

If you remember Google Photos giving you two months, you are not imagining it. Backed up photos and videos used to sit in the Google Photos trash for 60 days. Google cut that to 30. 9to5Google, reporting on September 8, 2026, found from archived copies of the help page that the change took effect around September 4, 2026, and Android users began seeing a notice about it in the app.

Google's help page now reads plainly: photos and videos you delete stay in your trash for 30 days before they are permanently deleted, and that applies both to items that were backed up and, on Android 11 and later, to items deleted from the phone without ever being backed up. Photos that were permanently deleted cannot be restored.

So two answers circulate, and the 60 day one is now wrong. It persists because it was true for years, it is written into countless recovery guides and forum replies, and Google changed it by editing a help page rather than with an announcement. Any page that tells you Google Photos keeps backed up items for 60 days was written before September 2026.

Every deletion window in one table

Each provider publishes its own number on its own help page, and none of them sits next to the others. Here they are side by side, taken from each company's help documentation as of October 2026.

The pattern is simple once it is laid out. Consumer accounts get 30 days almost everywhere. Paying for a business tier is the only common way to get more, and on a work account the number belongs to whoever runs the account, not to you.

What ends the window early

Thirty days is the maximum, not a promise. Several ordinary actions cut it short, and most people find out about them only after the fact.

• Emptying the trash. Google Drive says files are deleted forever after the trash period, and emptying it does the same immediately. Apple says you cannot recover or restore files you permanently remove. Clearing Recently Deleted to free space is the single most common way people lose a photo they later want back.
• A full recycle bin on OneDrive. Microsoft says that if your personal recycle bin is full, the oldest items are automatically deleted after three days. The 30 day figure assumes there is room.
• A full trash in Google Photos. When the trash is full, Google Photos offers to delete new items permanently instead of moving them to the trash. If you accept, there is no window at all.
• A recycle bin that was never switched on. Samsung says the Gallery recycle bin only catches photos if it was turned on before you deleted them.
• Drafts in Gmail. A deleted draft cannot be recovered from the trash, according to Google's own help page.

One more trap catches people on a computer. Microsoft notes that files deleted from OneDrive, including ones that were only stored online, do not appear in the computer's own Recycle Bin or Trash. If you look there and find nothing, check the OneDrive recycle bin on the web before you assume the file is gone.

Deleting on your phone deletes it in the cloud

The 30 day clock often starts without you meaning to start it. A synced photo library is one collection shown on several screens, so a photo removed from the phone to make room is removed from the cloud copy too, and from every other device signed into the same account. Apple says this directly about iCloud.com: deleting a photo there deletes it from all your devices that have iCloud Photos turned on.

That is why clearing space by deleting photos is risky with sync turned on. If your aim is room on the phone rather than fewer photos, the storage optimization settings and the other fixes in freeing space on a full phone are safer than deleting from the camera roll. And if a whole library needs to leave the phone, export it first, as described in a photo backup system that survives a lost phone, and only then delete.

The same logic explains why the trash is no protection against ransomware. Encrypted files are changed rather than deleted, so they never reach the trash at all. Version history is what helps there, and Microsoft 365 subscribers can roll an entire OneDrive back to any point in the last 30 days. How ransomware spreads to synced folders covers why that feature matters.

After the deadline, is anything left?

For a personal account, no. Google says permanently deleted photos cannot be restored and that Drive files are deleted forever. Apple says that after 30 days a photo is permanently deleted and you cannot get it back. Microsoft says you cannot restore files after they have been permanently deleted from the recycle bin. Support staff work inside the same rules, so asking them is not a back door, and recovery apps that promise to pull files back from a cloud account cannot reach data the provider itself says it no longer holds.

The one documented extension is for Google Workspace accounts run by an employer or school. An administrator can recover Drive items for 25 days after a user empties their trash, and Google says that after that period it purges the items from its systems and they cannot be recovered. That is an administrator's tool, so the request goes to your IT team, and quickly.

The only reliable copy after the deadline is one you made yourself: an exported library, an external drive, or a backup service with its own retention. That is the gap between sync and backup, explained in the 3-2-1 backup rule in real life, and it is the reason a trash folder should never be the plan.

When these numbers do not apply

These are the windows each provider publishes for its own trash or recycle bin, and they cover deletion only. Several other situations follow different rules.

Work and school accounts. The administrator sets the retention, which can be longer or shorter than the defaults in the table. Microsoft's 93 days applies unless the administrator changed it.

Deleting the whole account. Closing an account runs on a separate timetable from the trash, and the steps that make sure it is really gone are in deleting an account properly.

Deleting for privacy. An item in the trash still sits in your account and can be restored by anyone signed in to it, so empty the trash when the point is that something should be gone. What a company must delete when you ask is a separate question, covered in your data rights explained.

Losing access rather than deleting. If you are locked out, your files have not been deleted, but you cannot reach the trash either. Recovery options set up in advance, covered in setting up account recovery before you need it, are what get you back in.

Future changes. Google just halved one of these windows with a help page edit. Treat any figure here, including the ones in this article, as correct for October 2026 and check the provider's help page if the date matters.

What to do today

If you are trying to get something back, go to the web version of the service first, because that is where the trash or recycle bin is complete: photos.google.com, drive.google.com, icloud.com (Photos, then Recently Deleted, or Data Recovery for files), onedrive.com or dropbox.com. Do it now rather than at the weekend, since every day counts against the same 30.

If you are making sure it never matters, two habits cover nearly everything. Do not empty the trash just to free space, since on most services the trash empties itself on schedule. And keep one copy of the photos and documents you care about outside the account, refreshed a few times a year. If you are preparing a phone or laptop to leave your hands, the order of operations in wiping a device before you sell it keeps a reset from deleting anything the cloud has not already got.