Google decided to stop it’s one of a kind service of providing unlimited high quality photo storage on June 1st 2021. All photos and videos that you have backed up before this date won’t be counted towards the limited storage space. The new limited storage space is only 15GB including Google Photos, Drive and Gmail. So it’s not a lot of space if you think about it. So we’ve got these helpful tips for you to optimize your Google storage.
Google Storage Summary
To view your storage summary you can visit https://one.google.com/storage. From here you have access to all your stored files and you can see what is taking up most of your space. You can view each of these folders by clicking on the blue arrow button and delete whatever you think is unnecessary.
Storage Saver
Go to Photos settings and you’ll find these two options for original quality and storage quality. Original quality is basically the quality in which the video or picture was captured so if the file is 20mb it will remain the same. But for storage saver quality (previously known as High qaulity) the photo or video will still be in high quality but just slightly reduced from the original quality. This can save up a lot of space in Google Photos.
Recover Storage
Under the same photo quality settings (Photos settings) there’s an option to manage storage and recover storage. We’ll get to manage storage later. For now, if you click on recover storage you can see this pop up:
So now if you click compress all your photos and videos that have been backed up in Google Photos will be converted to Storage saver quality which overall will save up a lot of space from your limited 15GB.
Manage storage
If you click on Manage storage you’ll be brought to this page:
Here you can view an approximate timeline for how long you can use the free 15GB storage. But that’s not the important part. Under that you can review and delete your unwanted photos and videos. Google Photos with it’s amazing AI can detect most of your unwanted images perfectly and you can just click on them one by one to review and then delete them. By doing this you can free up your Google storage from any random pictures.
Use Google Formats
For saving space in Google Drive you can choose to upload your files in Google formats. For this all you have to do is go to Google Drive and open settings. From here you can see the option to convert uploads so just click on that and whenever you upload a file it’ll convert to a Google format by default. How is this saving space you ask? Native files in Google Drive don’t count towards the limited storage, that’s how. All your important files but taking up 0mb.
Empty Trash
The Trash is Google Photos can hold up to 1.5GB. And the items you delete don’t actually delete, they just stay in the trash for 60 days. So if you clear out your trash folder you can save that 1.5GB of space for photos you want to keep. Clear you Trash folder right after you’ve deleted unnecessary photos and videos so you won’t have unwanted files taking up any space.
Choose Device Folders to Backup
Google Photos will automatically backup everything from all your device folders unless you set which ones you want backed up and which ones you don’t. So for saving space you can open Google Photos on your phone then go to Photo settings > Back up & sync > Back up device folders and choose which apps’ photos and videos you want backed up.
Unsupported Videos
If Google Photos can’t process a video it’ll go straight to unsupported videos which means they actually haven’t been backed up because Google does not support them. But they are still taking up space. You can go to Google Photos settings and right under the Photo Quality settings you will find the option to view all your unsupported videos and delete them.
- Spam and Trash Mails
Even though you have deleted some mails and some go straight to spam, these are still taking up a lot of space. You delete all these emails and save up a lot of space. It’s best if you delete them immediately after you see them or else they’ll be taking up space you might need for other important emails.
Hopefully with these helpful tips you won’t have to worry about getting more storage for a very long time! These tips will let you upload all your necessary files and delete all the unwanted ones making it easier to store your files for free for longer.
