For many of us, Google storage is today’s hard drive. It is where our most important thoughts, documents and memories reside. But just like with a traditional hard drive, space is not infinite and running out of space can be a real problem.
By default, Google gives you 15GB of space to use for everything associated with your account. (If you already have a paid Google Workspace account with G Suite, your limit is likely higher.) This includes Gmail, Google Drive, and all Google photos-related content (except those saved before June 1, 2021). Needless to say, data is collected quickly.
You can check your current storage status by visiting this pageand if compulsion comes, you can buy more space there too. $2 a month for an extra 100GB. But it may not be necessary to spend more money. A quick old-fashioned cleaning tour may be all it takes to clear your virtual cobwebs and give yourself enough room to grow. Here’s how to do it.
Delete drive remnants
Google Drive is a common place where space-consuming files pile up and eat up your quota, but it doesn’t take long to tidy things up.
- Open this linkit will show you a list of all your Drive files sorted by size, with the largest items at the top.
- Check out the heaviest culprits and delete anything you no longer need
- Click the gear-shaped icon in the top right corner of Drive and select “Settings” then “Manage Applications”
- For apps with a note about confidential data, click the gray “Options” box on the right and select “Delete hidden app data”.
Apps associated with your Google Drive storage can sometimes have confidential data, but it only takes a few clicks to remove them.
- Open Your Drive Trash folder and click the “Empty trash” link at the top of the page
Free up photos storage
If you don’t already have a Pixel phone model 5 or older (in which case, you’ll be using the unlimited “Storage saver” option for now), starting June 1, 2021, every photo and video backed up to Google Photos is going to count against your Google storage. If you’re saving photos in their original size, you can save tons of space by converting them to Google’s “Storage saving” option (formerly called “High quality”). This compresses images to 16MP and videos to 1080p (this change unlikely to be noticed for most people and purposes).
- go to Photos settings pageand select “Storage saving”
- If you switch to “storage saving”, your previous photos will not be compressed automatically. To do this, on the Photos settings page, look for the “Recover storage” button, which will compress most (but not all) of your current videos and photos. (Check the list Google’s support page to see which images will be affected.)
Another useful resource on the same page is the “Manage storage” button. Tap that and it will take you to a page that tells you approximately how long you have before it fills up your storage space and offers to find (and delete) blurry photos, screenshots, and other potentially unwanted images. takes up space.
Say goodbye to Gmail junk
Emails don’t take up a lot of space, but you know what? Attachments You probably have a lot of old add-ons in your Gmail account that you don’t really need.
Here’s how to handle this:
- Go to the Gmail website and type “has:attachment large:10M” in the top search box
- Identify and delete all messages with disposable attachments. (Unfortunately, there’s no great way to get rid of an attachment without deleting the associated email as well, but you can always forward a message back to yourself and manually remove the attachment before undermining the original.)
- open yours spam fileand click the “Delete all spam now” link
- open yours trash folderand select “Empty the trash now” to send everything forever
Feeling lighter is liberating, right?
Update February 19, 2021 at 10:37 am ET: This article was originally published on March 19, 2019. The information in Google Photos has been updated and it is stated that G Suite is now Google Workspace.
Update October 21, 2021, 10:00 ET: Updated to account for changes in Google Photos’ storage options.
