Amazon Drive is shutting down, here’s what you need to do

Amazon is shutting down its cloud file storage service, Amazon Drive, in 2023. 

The company has announced that it’s closing Amazon Drive on 31 December 2023 and if you’re already a user then there are other important dates to know too as uploads will cut off sooner. 

Read this guide to find other everything you need to know about the Amazon Drive closure and what you can do about it. 

What is Amazon Drive?

Amazon Drive is a cloud-based file storage service that’s been an alternative to Google Drive and Dropbox for around 11 years. It was designed to store all kinds of files secure including videos, photos and other files including everything from PDFs to documents. 

Access to Amazon Drive has been one of the benefits of Amazon Prime membership with 5GB of free storage included along with the other perks. It’s an alternative to Amazon Photos (aka Prime Photos) which focuses solely on photos and provides unlimited storage for your photos via apps on iOS or Android.  

Which cloud storage service is right for you? iCloud vs Google Drive vs OneDrive vs Dropbox

What’s happening to Amazon Drive?

Amazon has officially announced that it’s closing down Amazon Drive at the end of 2023. The company has said that it is focussing its efforts on Amazon Photos instead. 

After 31 December 2023 customers will no longer have access to Amazon Drive and that includes your files stored there. 

In the run-up to the shutdown, other things are happening too:

31 October 2022 – Amazon will remove the Android Drive app from the iOS and Google Play app stores31 January 2023 – you’ll no longer be able to upload files to Amazon Drive via the website

Amazon says you’ll have the chance to download files from your Amazon Drive from now until the final date of the closure. Amazon Photos is not suffering the same fate, so you can continue to use that service for photos and videos. 

Amazon has also said that if you’ve got the Amazon Drive app already installed then it will continue to function but will no longer be supported for bug fixes or security updates. 

How do I download my files from Amazon Drive?

In the meantime, you can (and should) download your files from Amazon Drive and back them up elsewhere if you need to. 

To do so:

Visit the Amazon Drive site and loginFind and access the folders and files you want to saveClick the download icon on the top of the site’s navigationRepeat this for all the files you want to save

Amazon says that if you have any problems downloading your files then you can contact customer support here. 

How to cancel Amazon Drive

If you’ve been paying extra for the higher-tier storage options of Amazon Drive then you might want to cancel your subscription soon. 

To cancel Amazon Drive:

Head over to the Amazon Drive storage plan page.Login Click the option to “cancel my plan” Then click on “end now” under the options. 

What to do with your files

Once you’ve downloaded your files Amazon suggests that you can store them locally. Alternatively, there are a number of other reliable cloud storage options to choose from. Depending on the size of your files you might need to pay a fee, but there are also a number of free plans too. 

Google Drive includes 15GB for free as standard for just having a Google account. So that’s worth looking at as an easy option.