Amazon Ending a Key Perk for Amazon Prime Customers

The buttons of the online shopping app Amazon, surrounded by Airbnb, ebay, News and other apps on the screen of an iPhone.

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published 1 August 2022

Months after raising its annual membership by 17%, Amazon.com is taking away one of its perks of Amazon Prime.

Amazon announced to members that it will cease supporting Amazon Drive at the end of December 2023. Formerly known as Amazon Cloud Drive, Amazon Drive is a cloud storage application first offered by Amazon 11 years ago. Amazon Prime members received 5 GB of free cloud storage (with the option to buy more) in Amazon Drive to stash all sorts of files: photos, videos and more.

Amazon said it is removing Amazon Drive in order to concentrate on Amazon Photos, its photo and video storage option for Amazon Prime. To that end, Amazon will remove the Amazon Drive app from iOS and Android app stores on Oct. 31, 2022. Amazon won't accept any more downloads to Amazon Drive beginning Jan. 31. Amazon Drive customers will have until Dec. 31, 2023 to access and move files, whether by download or transfer.

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"We understand that content saved on Amazon Drive is very important to our customers," Amazon told customers in an email. "We will communicate our plan to remove or delete files prior to December 31, 2023, and provide sufficient time for customers to save their files."

Customer’s photos will be automatically shifted to Amazon Photos, the company said. Amazon Photos offers free unlimited storage for photos and up to 5 GB of free video storage. Additional video storage is available in monthly or annual plans. The perk allows customers to view their stored photos and videos in Amazon Photos via the app, web app or desktop app. Amazon Prime customers can share the storage with up to five members.

If you want to download your files now, Amazon says to take these steps:

Go to amazon.com/clouddrive.
Login using your Amazon account.
Select the folders or files you want to save. After selecting, click the download icon from the top navigation that appears in blue. Repeat these steps for all files and folders you wish to save.

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Bob was Senior Editor at Kiplinger.com for seven years and is now a contributor to the website. He has more than 40 years of experience in online, print and visual journalism. Bob has worked as an award-winning writer and editor in the Washington, D.C., market as well as at news organizations in New York, Michigan and California. Bob joined Kiplinger in 2016, bringing a wealth of expertise covering retail, entertainment, and money-saving trends and topics. He was one of the first journalists at a daily news organization to aggressively cover retail as a specialty and has been lauded in the retail industry for his expertise. Bob has also been an adjunct and associate professor of print, online and visual journalism at Syracuse University and Ithaca College. He has a master’s degree from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and a bachelor’s degree in communications and theater from Hope College.