Google recently changed its Disk photo storage policy, which can make free storage disappear much faster. If you get an alert that your 15 GB is running out, it's a good time to clean out the trash and delete everything you don't need.
What could be taking up space in Google Drive
If you're not using Disk to store personal files you manually upload to the cloud, free space can slowly run out anyway. It gets eaten up:
emails and attachments from your Gmail account;
Photos and videos from Google Photos, if you have syncing with Google Drive enabled;
backups and data from your Android smartphone;
Word documents, spreadsheets, presentations, PDF files, ZIP archives, and anything else you have added via links from other users.
To find out exactly what your Google Drive fills up, open a special page of the Google One service. There, under the plan offerings, you'll see a graphical scale.
How to get rid of unnecessary data in Google Drive
1. Deleting unnecessary e-mails.
If you've been using Gmail for a long time and often for work, deleting emails will greatly relieve Disk. First, check the "Drafts", "Spam", "Trash" folders and delete their contents.
Next, sort through your mail. The heaviest emails are those with attachments. To display them, type has: attachment in the Gmail search bar, click "Contains attachments," select and delete anything unnecessary.
5 easy steps to delete everything unnecessary in Google Drive
With "Advanced Search" you can display all e-mails whose size exceeds, for example, 3 or 5 MB, as well as display e-mails from a certain period. This will allow you to get rid of heavy or just very old emails.
5 easy steps to delete everything you don't need from Google Drive
2. Deleting unnecessary media files from Google Photos
When you have synchronization with Google Photos enabled, all photos and videos from your smartphone camera are stored in "Disk". To make them take up less space, it is worth lowering the quality of the downloaded files. To do this, open the settings of "Google Photos" and turn on compression.
Five simple steps to delete everything unnecessary in "Google Disk"
There in the settings item "Unsupported videos" you can go to the list of clips that cannot be played, but they take up memory space. These are, for example, application files or automatic recordings, which are also quite possible to get rid of.
You will have to clean the "Google Photos" library manually, looking through all the uploaded images and deleting unnecessary ones. The "Storage" section will make this task a little easier. It provides access to selections of potentially unnecessary files, including screenshots, blurry photos, and very heavy videos.
5 easy steps to delete everything unnecessary on Google Drive
After cleaning, don't forget to delete everything from the Google Photos trash can, because the files in it take up memory space, too.
3. Deleting Android apps data
The "Disk" can remain data of mobile applications that you deleted long ago, including those from old, already unused smartphones. Usually such data weighs about 1 MB, but there are exceptions weighing tens of times more.
5 simple steps to delete everything unnecessary on Google Drive
To check for such files, go to settings and select "Manage Applications". Scroll through the list and see if there is any useless obsolete data taking up space in the cloud.
4. Deleting heavy files.
After you've cleaned up your emails, photos, and app data, it's time to check the files you've manually uploaded to Disk or received from other users. To go straight to the heaviest files, open the service settings and select "Items taking up storage space" at the top.
5 easy steps to delete everything unnecessary on Google Drive
Clicking will open a list of all your files sorted by weight. The heaviest and not the most valuable to you can be deleted. And if you don't want to lose anything, you can transfer it to your PC, freeing up space on "Disk".
5. Cleaning the Recycle Bin of Google Drive.
The last step of the "cleaning" in the cloud should be the cleaning of the "Google Disk" Recycle Bin. That's where all the files you've deleted in the last 30 days are stored. When more time passes, the files are erased automatically.
5 easy steps to delete everything unnecessary in Google Drive
To delete everything all at once, click the "Clear Trash" button in the upper right corner.
Note that the recalculation of free space in "Google Disk" is sometimes delayed. Therefore, after all the manipulation, it may take some time for the service to display more free memory.
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