On June 1, 2021, the day arrived: Google Photos storage was no longer free and unlimited by choosing a reduced quality. All photos and videos saved in Google Photos since then are deducted from storage space, and sooner or later, the 15 GB that Google offers for free will eventually fill up.
For me, that moment started to happen a few weeks ago, when Google apps started warning me that my storage space was almost full, with a warning icon on my account photo and warnings in almost all Google apps. The solution hasn’t been to pay, at least for now, but to do a thorough cleaning.
Rescuing wasted space
In my case, my Google account has 19 GB of free space, after collecting the precious extra 2 GB to do the security review for two years, back when Google was still giving things away for life. Among them, more than 17 GB had been filled, i.e. 90% of the space was occupied.
The good news is that much of this space was reclaimable, and the only reason it was still busy was because of laziness not to do proper cleaning or as a holdover from the past, when storage didn’t get lost “as fast” as it is now, picture by picture. That’s what I did to recover about 10 GB.
First, delete large photos and videos
The only change there has been in Google storage is in Google Photos. Previously, reduced quality photos and videos did not take up space, but since last June, all photos and videos are discounted. Therefore, I hope the best way to alleviate the space filling up is to clean up Google Photos.
Photos that were in Google Photos before June 1, 2021 don’t take up space, but all subsequent photos do. Doing a thorough manual cleaning of Google Photos would be a huge job. A more efficient way to free up space quickly is find great photos and videos and, if consumable, delete them from Google Photos.
You can do this from the Google Photos app itself. Tap your profile picture > Photo Settings > Backup & Sync and press Manage storage space. At the top is Great photos and videos, which you can review and delete later. In my case, I had long videos that didn’t need to be deleted, so I was able to salvage a few hundred MB. It wasn’t much, but it all helps.
Blurry photos and screenshots? No thanks
From the same previous section, you can find other items that might be worth removing. This is the case with screenshots, images from other applications and blurry pictures.
In my case, I stopped including the application screenshots and photos in the copy of Google Photos, so the backup of these headings was almost nil. One important thing is to always check what gets deleted, because screenshots aren’t necessarily screenshots, but images that Google Photos considers screenshots (and which they may not always be) .
Convert everything to “economy” quality
I’ve always had my Google Photos backup set to reduced quality, or as it’s called now, storage savings. However, Google sometimes seems to get confused with the question, and it never hurts to check that the setting stays that way. For example, I discovered that my new cell phone was copying to original quality, thus taking up much more storage space than strictly necessary.
The good news is that there is an easy solution, although you must use the Google Photos website, as this is not possible from the app. You will need to open this link and press reclaim space. What it will do is compress photos and videos to their original quality so they take up less space. This saved me some precious extra GBs of space.
No more using Drive as storage space
Gone are the days when you didn’t have to worry about your photos or videos being used on Google’s shared storage, and free space was more or less stable. Yes, it was still downgraded daily by Gmail emails, but emails usually don’t take up too much space.
When I had a lot of free space, I kept many folders in Drive as a backup and to always have them close at hand. Now is the time to store them locally and leave Drive for the basics.
A few years ago, with so much free Google storage, I made the decision to include multiple large folders and documents in Google Drive, to always have them at hand on any PC and at any time. Today, it’s time to tighten my belt and reduce the amount of stuff I store in Google Drive “just in case”.
I switched to saving most of these files locally on my PC, freeing up an insane amount of space. In this case, I’ve done an exhaustive review, but if you don’t have much time, you can find the files that occupy your Google Drive the most from this link.
Gmail deep cleaning
It’s much easier to find the most used emails with a client like Thunderbird
If you’re one of those people who keeps the inbox clean, you can probably skip this step, but if not, it’s recommended to clean up Gmail to free up space. As we mentioned earlier, most emails barely take up space, but you might have good collection of bulky mail hidden in your Gmail.
The problem is that neither the app nor the Gmail website allows you to clean up mail very easily. From this website, Google shows you emails with large attachments, but it’s a bit confusing. It’s easier configure Gmail and Thunderbird or similar email clients, on a PC, to be able to sort emails by size and select and delete them much faster and more comfortably. It takes time, yes, but it is worth it.
It’s time to take out the trash
After so much cleaning, many deleted files end up in the various bins of Gmail, Drive and Photos. It’s a good resource in case you accidentally delete something, but if you’re sure that whatever you deleted is worth deleting, you can empty the trash instead of waiting 30 or 60 days in turn for each file to be automatically deleted.
You can do it manually in each application, but you have them all at your fingertips with the quick access on the Google storage management page, in the section thrown objects. Again, make sure what you delete is worth deleting, because you won’t have any way to get it back otherwise.
Lots of work and 10 GB freed up
After completing all the above tasks, I went from 17 GB occupied to 7 GB, having freed up 10 GB. Yeah, I must admit that it was not for nothing: I lost a few hours on all that.
The less than 12GB of free storage I have right now won’t last me forever (according to Google, it will last me about a year), and even if I clean again, there will inevitably come a time when nothing can be done. It will probably be my turn to checkout, but later that time will come…the less I have paid, the more time I will have to think about whether to use an alternative.
Table of Contents
