You’re not alone if your Google Drive suddenly seems to be more crowded than your schedule for your summer trip. The 15GB of free storage may quickly be used by the accumulation of pictures, movies, emails, and other documents. Additionally, when every file matters, a few large uploads might have you frantically searching for storage space before you can say “storage full.”
You will be prompted to upgrade to a Google One plan if your storage runs out, but you are not required to purchase digital storage. You can move all of your previous files and emails for free if you’re prepared to set up a new Google account. Here are some other tips to quickly free up space in your digital file cabinet, however, if that seems like a headache.
You’ll find it simpler to manage and organize your files if you attempt these methods on your laptop instead of your phone. If all you have is a mobile device, we’ll guide you through both steps.
- Locate and remove big files with ease
Sorting each service by file size and removing just one or two huge files rather than several dozen smaller ones can save up space if you wish to maintain most of your stuff in Gmail and Google Drive. Sorting through hundreds of outdated papers with comparable file sizes to determine which may be destroyed is more difficult than deleting one or two films that take up several gigabytes of space. In Google Drive, remove files based on their size.
Here’s how to remove files off your desktop based on their size. - Open your Google Drive account and log in.
- From the menu on the left side of the screen, choose Storage.
- Click Storage utilized on the right side of the screen if your files are not listed from biggest to smallest on the Storage page. Sorting the files from biggest to smallest is now necessary.
- To choose the huge files you want to remove, click on them. Pressing and holding the Shift key on your keyboard allows you to choose multiple files.
- Click the trash can that shows up close to the top of the screen or click and drag the big files to the Trash on the left side of the screen after choosing which files to remove. Once the objects are in the trash, you’re not done. To access the Trash menu, click Trash on the left side of the screen. Next, choose Empty Trash from the menu on the right, followed by Empty forever. On your mobile device, you may also remove files based on their size. Here’s how.
- Launch the Google Drive application and sign in with your credentials.
- In the lower-right corner of the screen, tap Files.
- Near the top of the screen, under My Drive, tap Name.
- Select “Storage used.” Your files will be arranged from biggest to smallest as a result. To arrange your files from smallest to biggest, choose My Drive and then Storage utilized once more.
- Next to the item you want to remove, tap the three dots (…).
- Select Move to trash after tapping Remove. According to Google’s app, after 30 days, anything in your trash are immediately erased permanently. Here’s how to expedite the process and get rid of your garbage right now.
- Next to Search in Drive, tap the hamburger symbol (three stacked lines) in the upper-left corner of the screen.
- Select Trash.
- In the upper-right corner of the screen, tap the three dots (…).
- Select “Empty trash.” The phone’s Gmail symbol
It’s simple to create storage space in Gmail, regardless of whether you need additional space or just want to keep your account organized.
Martin James/CNET In Gmail, delete files based on size.
In Gmail, you may also remove files based on their size. On a PC, this is how. - Open Gmail and log in.
- In the search field, type has:attachment larger:10MB, then click Search. This will display, in order of greatest to smallest, any emails with attachments bigger than 10MB. This format is not limited to 10MB files; it may also be used to filter by other file sizes.
- Click the Trash button at the top of your screen after checking the boxes to the left of each email you want to remove. It belongs in the Conversations section.
- To access the Trash menu, click Trash on the left side of the screen. If Trash isn’t shown, click More, and the menu should expand to include Trash.
- At the top of the screen, choose Empty trash immediately. The Gmail app also allows you to remove files in a similar manner. Here’s how.
- Launch the Gmail application and sign in with your credentials.
- In the search field, type has:attachment larger:10MB, then click Search. This will display, in order of greatest to smallest, any emails with attachments bigger than 10MB. This format is not limited to 10MB files; it may also be used to filter by other file sizes.
- Tap the email that you want to remove.
- Tap the symbol for the trash can at the top of your screen.
- In your screen’s upper-left corner, tap <.
- Next to Search in mail, in the upper-left corner of the screen, tap the hamburger symbol.
- Select Trash.
- Select “Empty trash.” Keep in mind that files that are placed in the trash will be automatically removed after 30 days.
- Clear out the spam folder.
It may take up extra space in your Gmail account, and it’s easy to forget to clear your spam folder. Another option to free up space is to clear up your spam folder, as well as your social or promotional folders. Here’s how to clear up your desktop’s Spam folder. - Open Gmail and log in.
- On the left side of the screen after logging in, choose Spam. Click More to view Spam in the expanded menu if you don’t see it.
- Click Delete all spam messages now in your Spam folder.
- In the pop-up, choose OK. Here’s how to clear the mobile app’s Spam folder.
- Launch the Gmail application and sign in with your credentials.
- Next to Search in mail, in the upper-left corner of the screen, tap the hamburger symbol.
- Press Spam.
- Select Empty spam immediately or Delete all spam communications now. A stack of documents
Avoid letting spam overwhelm your Gmail account.
3. Remove duplicate or outdated images from Google Photos.
Google offers its customers 15GB of free storage, which includes Google Photos. It’s a good idea to remove outdated and duplicate photographs and videos to free up space since they may take up more space than text-based files, particularly higher-quality ones. You’ll need to manually go through and remove stuff since there isn’t a way to organize your pictures and videos from biggest to smallest as in Google Drive and Gmail. By picking a file and clicking the “i” for information from the top menu, you can see how much space it is taking up. Here’s how to remove images and videos from your desktop version of Google Photos. - Launch Google Photos and sign in.
- Click the gray checkmark symbol in the upper-left corner of the image or video after moving your mouse pointer over the ones you want to remove. As many pictures and movies as you like may be affected in this way.
- In the upper-right corner of the screen, click the trash symbol.
- Select “Move to trash.”
- On the left side of the screen, choose Trash.
- In the upper-right corner of your screen, choose Empty trash.
- You’re done when you click Empty trash once again. To remove images and videos from the Google Photos mobile app, follow these steps. Users of Apple devices should be aware that if your iCloud account and Gmail are connected, the two online storage platforms can be connected as well. This implies that all of your iPhone’s local images will appear in Google images when you activate the Backup & Sync option. The local picture on your iPhone will be deleted if you remove a photo from Google Photos. The local picture will not appear on iCloud once it has been deleted. When you attempt to remove a picture from Google Photos, a pop-up box will alert you that you are going to remove the image from both locations, so you can determine whether this is you.
- Launch Google Photos and sign in.
- To remove a picture or video, tap on it.
- In the lower-right corner of the screen, tap the trash can symbol.
- Press Delete.
- In the lower-right corner of the screen, tap Library.
- Select Trash.
- In the upper-right corner of the screen, tap the three dots (…).
- Select “Empty trash.”
- Press Delete. On both desktop and mobile devices, the deleted images and videos will be automatically erased after 60 days if you don’t click or touch Empty trash. Bonus tip: Google Photos allows you to minimize the size of certain images and videos. You will be able to reclaim some space by doing this, but the quality of your material will suffer. Google Support has additional information about this here. Google One Plan
Google Photos’ images and videos may use a significant amount of storage space. - Download your files to your desktop when all else fails.
You may download and keep your files directly on your computer if your storage is almost full and you are unable to part with any more stuff from Google Drive, Gmail, or Google Photos. To save all of your Google files on a different hard drive, follow these steps. - On your desktop, launch Google Drive or Google Photos and sign in.
- Choose the pictures or files you want to download.
- In the top-right corner of your screen, click the three stacked dots.
- Select “Download.” Be aware that messages will be downloaded as.eml files by Gmail.
- Feel free to remove the goods from your account and clear up your trash cans once they have been downloaded and transferred to your hard disk. Although you must download each email individually, you may download emails from Gmail in a similar manner. This makes it more time-consuming to download your emails, but it is still feasible. To download your Gmail emails, follow these steps.
- On your desktop, launch Gmail and sign in.
- To download the email, click on it.
- In the top-right corner of your screen, click the three stacked dots.
- Select “Download.” An.eml file containing your emails will be downloaded.
- Feel free to remove your emails from your account and clear up your trash cans once they have been downloaded and stored on your hard disk.