6 Simple Tips to Free Up Space in Google Drive

Google Drive offers 15GB of free storage, but that space may run out faster than you think. But you don’t need to rush out to buy extra storage space. With a few simple cleaning steps, you can quickly reclaim space and make room for what really matters.

Find out what’s taking up space in your account

When your Google Drive starts to run out of storage space, the first instinct is usually to delete the large files stored there. However, what many people don’t know is that Drive’s 15GB of free storage is also shared between Gmail and Google Photos. This means that the real culprit for your full storage may not even be the Drive itself.

To find out what’s taking up the most space, visit the Google One storage page. There you will see a detailed breakdown of the amount of storage used by each service (Drive, Gmail and Photos). Once you know where the majority of your data is stored, you can focus your cleaning efforts where it’s most important, rather than wasting time deleting a few small files.

Find and delete large files from Google Drive

If you notice that Google Drive is using the most storage on your Google One page, start by freeing up some space there. Often it’s occupied by large files you no longer need, duplicate items, old backups, or even compressed folders you forgot to delete. Fortunately, Google Drive makes finding and deleting these files easy.

To do this, open Google Drive and navigate to the “Storage” tab in the left sidebar. Next, click “Storage Used” to sort the files from largest to smallest. This will help you quickly identify what is consuming space. You can also filter files by type, like videos, zipped folders, or forms, to narrow your search and delete only what you no longer need.

Likewise, there are “orphan files”: files that you added to a shared folder owned by someone else and that have since been deleted. Even though these files no longer appear in your main Drive list, they are still taking up storage space. For this reason, you need to find and delete orphaned files to reclaim storage space.

Free up space by optimizing Google Photos

If Google Photos is consuming most of your storage space, there are several ways to free up space. First, if you save photos and videos in “Original Quality,” consider upgrading to “Storage Saver” (formerly called High Quality). This mode lightly compresses your media, reducing file size with minimal impact on visual quality.

To enable this, open Google Photos settings, change the upload quality to “Storage Saver”. Then go to “Manage Storage” to delete unnecessary items, such as blurry photos, screenshots or large and outdated videos.

For your most important high-resolution photos, consider transferring them to an external drive to avoid using cloud storage.

Delete large attachments in Gmail

If you find that Gmail is using up a lot of your Google storage, it’s probably due to old emails with heavy attachments that have accumulated over time. Deleting these unnecessary emails can free up valuable storage space, leaving more room for Google Drive and Google Photos, which share the same storage quota.

Luckily, Gmail makes finding these emails easy. Just open Gmail and type a: larger attachment: 10 MB in the search bar. This filters emails with large attachments. Review the results, delete those you no longer need, and if an email contains important files, download the attachments to your computer before deleting the message.

Use Google One Storage Manager

If you prefer not to clean up storage for each Google service individually, you can use Google One’s storage manager. When you open it, you’ll see cleaning suggestions for things like blurry photos, screenshots, emails with large attachments, and large Drive files. Click “Review” to go through these items, select what you no longer need, and delete them directly.

For a more thorough cleanup, look at the storage distribution for each service. Each section provides filters to help you free up space more efficiently. For example, delete spam, trash, or emails with large attachments to reclaim Gmail storage space. Likewise, delete unsupported videos, large media files and other unnecessary data to reclaim additional space.

Empty Trash in all Google apps

Since you probably deleted files from Google Drive, emails from Gmail, and photos from Google Photos during cleaning, keep in mind that they stay in the Trash for 30 days and still take up storage space until they are permanently deleted. To actually reclaim this space, you’ll need to manually empty the Trash in each Google service.

In Google Drive, open the sidebar, select “Trash” and click “Empty Trash”.

In Gmail, navigate to the “Trash” folder and select “Empty Trash.”

In Google Photos, open your library, go to the “Trash” tab and click “Empty Trash” to empty it.

Once permanently deleted, the freed space will be reflected in your storage. You should empty the Trash regularly to permanently delete large deleted files.

Running out of Google Drive storage doesn’t mean you have to delete important files. Using the tips above, you can identify what’s taking up space and safely delete unnecessary files while optimizing settings to reclaim storage without deleting anything important. You should also review and empty your storage regularly to ensure you always have enough space.

If the steps above don’t free up enough space on your Google Drive and you find the 15GB on the free plan insufficient, you can always upgrade to a paid storage plan.