Missionary google accounts now expire 60 days after return

All missionaries returning after January 1, 2026 will have only 60 days after their release date to download all of the pictures, videos, emails, and notes stored in their Google account before they lose access to them. This change was announced on December 13th, 2025 on the Missionary Technology Support Site, which is accessible only to active missionaries. This change reduces the time limit by 30 days, where returned missionaries previously had 90-day window to save their files.

If you have recently passed this limit, contact us now to help you recover your data. Your chances of recovery are much greater within 30 days of losing access. If you or a loved one are currently serving, please prepare now to save your mission data and meet with us for help. 

During their volunteer service, missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are required to use a provided Church-owned phone and a Google Workspace account that is managed by missionary.org. This account is the only cloud storage that they can access during their service. As such, Google services like Photos, Gmail, and Drive become the home of all their mission pictures, videos, emails, notes, and other documents. Missionaries are instructed to factory reset their Church-provided phone before they bring it home, wiping all data and removing the Church Protections filters so they can use the device on their own. However, this often leaves the mission Google account as the sole remaining backup of all their digital memories from their mission. These Google services are difficult to move out all the data at once. In a survey of 258 returned missionaries at BYU that used smartphones on their mission, only 46% were able to successfully download their mission Google Photos, and even fewer were able to save their mission Gmail or Keep Notes. 

This represents a significant loss for an entire generation of missionaries that will have a diminished capacity to remember the poignant spiritual experiences from their mission through looking back at digital journals, pictures, and emails. The sooner expiration time means that it's more important than ever for missionaries to be prepared and to quickly download all their mission files once they get home.