MEGA Review

MEGA is a cloud storage service, meaning that you can upload your files to the website to store them there instead of on your computer. Once your files are stored in your MEGA account, you can access them from anywhere, like another computer or the mobile app, as well as share them with others.

An online file storage service is a great idea if you’re running low on local storage space. If your hard drive is getting full and you don’t have anywhere else to store your big files, or even your smaller ones, you can offload them to MEGA to free up local space. Sharing big files is another reason to keep your data in a cloud storage service.

You can use MEGA free if you don’t need anything more than 50 GB of storage space. But if you require more space, you can upgrade to a paid plan.

Tip: See these other online storage services that support large files if you need to upload really big files.

MEGA: A Quick Look

Before we look at the most important features in more detail, here’s what you can expect from MEGA if you’d rather just sign up right away:

Get 50 GB instantly, for free. You can earn more free space by completing “achievements,” or upgrade/pay to get up to 16 TB.
Upload specific files and whole folders at once.
View and upload via the website, mobile app, or desktop app.
Steam videos and view images and PDFs straight from your account without downloading them back to your device.
File versioning lets you restore older versions of files that you’ve already deleted from your computer.
Includes a chat function that works with any other MEGA user.
It’s really secure. Your password isn’t stored by MEGA, so they can’t even recover it for you. There’s also two-factor authentication you can enable.

How to Upload Files to MEGA

You can upload files to your MEGA account in a few ways:

From the Website

MEGA’s website lets you upload files and folders from your computer. Select the cloud icon from the menu on the left, and then use the File Upload button to choose one or more files to put into your MEGA account, or use the Folder Upload button to select an entire folder full of files.

As files are uploading, you’ll see a transfer window like this:

Hover your mouse over any of the items in the queue to pause them or completely cancel them from uploading.

From the Mobile App

MEGA’s mobile app can be installed on Android, iPhone, and iPad devices. Tap the cloud icon from the bottom menu to see all the files in your account. The plus button is how you can upload files stored on your device. You can also take a picture right from the MEGA app and then automatically upload it to your account.

Press the camera icon from the menu to set up automatic camera uploads. This will auto-send all your videos and photos to your MEGA account to constantly keep them safely backed up in your cloud account. You can enable auto-upload just for photos or videos, or both. They’ll be stored in a separate folder in your MEGA account called Camera Uploads.

From the MEGA Desktop App

MEGA’s desktop app works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can have it sync all your files so that you see all of them from the desktop program, or you can enable “selective sync” to choose which folders from your cloud drive you want to see in the app.

Once MEGA is installed, you’ll instantly see all your files in a special folder. Drop any file or folder into this folder to upload them to your MEGA account. Anything you send to MEGA this way will be accessible from the website and mobile app, too, just like when you upload files via those methods.

The desktop MEGA program has several useful options that you should know about if you plan to use it to upload files to your account. For example, the Syncs folder lets you choose other folders to sync to your account, and you can even choose which folder on MEGA the files should upload to.

The other tabs are for controlling the speed at which files are allowed to upload/download, which files and folders should be excluded from uploads, whether file versioning should be disabled or enabled, if MEGA should start when your computer starts, and more.

Something else you can do when MEGA is installed to your computer is right-click any file or folder and select Upload to MEGA to instantly send it into the folder you see above. It will then upload to your MEGA account just as if you’d copied it there yourself.

How to Share Your MEGA Files

Just like how you can upload files to MEGA from the website or mobile/desktop app, sharing is available in those three ways, too. You can share files with anyone, even if they don’t use MEGA. This is really handy and something that not all cloud storage services support, so it’s nice to see it here.

If you’re using the website, right-click the item you want to share, such as a file, and choose Get link. This gives you a new window with some options, but what most people should copy is the Link with key option. The other links are useful for specific security reasons.

The mobile app works in much the same way, but tap the menu next to the folder/file you want to share. You’ll be given the same three link options.

Using the desktop app? You can share from there, too. Open the folder that has the file or folder already uploaded to MEGA. Right-click the item and choose Get MEGA link. It will be copied automatically, so you can paste it anywhere to share the file/folder.

You can remove share links as well, which is helpful if you want to stop anyone from accessing something that you’ve already shared. You can do this from the mobile app and from the website. Just repeat the same step you followed to get the link, but choose Remove link.

More MEGA Features

There’s quite a lot more you can do with MEGA. Here are just a few of the options and other features:

Create MEGAdrop folders that non-users can use to send files directly to your account.
View a record of the last logins (up to 250) from your account that were made through the website or either of the apps. You can close the other open sessions remotely.
Receive storage quota warnings when you’re about to fill up your account.
Install the MEGA app to get more storage for a few months.
Invite friends to sign up for MEGA and you’ll receive 10 GB for each one for a whole year.
Download your Recovery Key so that you can get back into your account should you need to.
Easily delete all old versions of all your files with one button.
Choose how long files are kept in the trash before auto-deleting. Pick anywhere from 7 to 30 days.
Limit the upload speed when sending files to your account from the MEGA website or desktop app.
Download shared folders as a ZIP file or transfer the files into your own MEGA account.
See all your shared links listed on one page, and easily disable them if you need to quit sharing something.
Search through all your files and folders with a single search tool.
MEGA can be integrated in the Thunderbird email client if you use that.

Upgrading to MEGA Pro

The free MEGA account might be just fine for you, but you should know that there are multiple Pro accounts you can subscribe to if you need more storage. Storage is really the only difference between the free MEGA account and a MEGA Pro account.

For example, the Pro Lite plan is several dollars per month but you get way more storage (400 GB). If you plan to store more data in your account, you’ll need more storage which you can get with the Pro 1, Pro 2, or Pro 3 account. The largest plan provides 16 TB of storage and runs for around $30 /month.

See MEGA’s Pro plans for all the most up-to-date pricing and other details.