How to optimize your Google Drive storage space

Google Drive offers its users highly reliable free cloud storage space of up to 15GB which is enough for emails, photos and documents. When the free storage limit reaches its capacity, Google asks you to buy more space by paying for it. The trick to avoid buying additional space here is to manage and optimize the content already present in the storage to make more space for storing other files.

The most common file types that take up storage on the drive are:

• Emails with attachments
• Videos and photos in Google Photos
• Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF and any file shared with you
• Backups of your Android phones and any other data in the application.

Read on for methods that can help you optimize data on Google Drive instead of upgrading to Google One.

Method 1: delete large attachments and emails from Gmail

Many users never know that emails and attachments in their Gmail count towards Drive storage space. So one of the first solutions is to delete the mails with large attachments from your mailbox.

1. Open Gmail in the browser.

2. At the beginning, Remove the content in your Trash, Spam and Draft folders in your mailbox.

3. Click the Search filter icon in the search box to see the Advanced search menu.

4. Cheque the box next to Has attachment for the search to return only emails with attachments.

5. In the box next to Size option, choose greater than that and X MB where X is the size of the attached file. Try something between 5 and 10 MB.

6. Now click on the Look for button.

7. Cheque the emails you want to delete and click the Delete icon on top.

8. You can also use other search filters like date range, PDF files and archives to retrieve emails and delete them.

Method 2: use high quality for photos and videos on Google Photos

All photos and videos uploaded to Google Photos in original quality count towards storage space. Follow the steps below to set a high quality for your photo and video uploads.

1. Go to Google Photos and log in with your account.

2. Click the Settings (gear icon) in the upper right.

3. You will see a subtitle Upload size for photos and videos.

4. Now choose the Storage savings option. Save your photos and videos in reduced quality compared to the original quality.

5. Click Recover storage to convert existing images and videos to high quality.

6. Click Compress When prompted Compress original quality to storage-saving quality.

6. Then scroll down to Unsupported Videos and click Vista.

7. You will see a list of videos that cannot be processed and are not compatible with the Google Drives browser-based player.

8. You can Check all (or just those you want to remove).

9. Then click Permanently delete (trash icon) in the upper right.

10. Click the Delete when prompted for confirmation to permanently delete those videos.

Method 3: change the format from MS Office Docs to Google Docs

As we already know, Google has its own online Office suite called Google Docs that allows users to create documents, spreadsheets, and PPTs. But most users have no idea that files created with Google Docs do not count towards Drive storage space. Follow the steps below to convert any file (Word, Excel, or PowerPoint) to a Google Doc file.

1. With your browser, go to your Google Drive account.

2. The right button of the mouse in the file you want to convert and select To open with. Here we have used an example of converting an Excel spreadsheet to Google Sheets.

3. Now select the next option according to the file type

• Google Documents for word document
• Google Sheets for excel sheet
• Google Presentations for PowerPoint presentation

4. Once the file opens in a new tab, click the Proceedings menu and select Save as Google Sheets / Google Docs / Google Slides depending on your file type.

5. Your file is converted and runs in the Google Docs version of your Word document, spreadsheet, or PowerPoint.

Method 4: remove old and irrelevant items from the drive

1. Open Drive using your browser.

2. In the Search in Drive box at the top, you can search Photos and images, videos, PDF files, documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

3. When you Please select an item in the list, you can view the item details (file size and date last modified) at Details panel On the right side.

4. You can select an item and click Delete (trash icon).

5. To find out which items are using the storage, follow the steps below:

• Click on the Settings icon at the top.
• Now select Settings in the menu list.

• In the new window, go to General tab and click View items that take up storage to see the list of items that are the main cause of reducing your storage space.

6. If you want to remove the files in this list from the drive, select it and click Delete (trash icon) on top. You can also select files in bulk and then delete them.

Method 5 – Clear Trash from Google Drive

Usually files that are deleted from Google Drive are stored in Trash for 30 days and use the storage space on your drive. To get this space occupied by deleted files, it is necessary to empty the trash on the drive.

1. Access your Google Drive account.

2. In the left sidebar, click Compartment.

3. Click the option Empty container on the right side to remove all deleted items from Bin.

4. Click Delete forever when asked for confirmation.

Method 6: delete Android app data from your account

If your Android apps are connected to Drive account, there will always be some app data stored on Google Drive without your knowledge. Usually this data is hidden, but you can remove it from your account by following these steps:

1. In your Google Drive account, click the Settings (gear icon) on top.

2. Select Settings in the list that appears.

3. In the Settings window, go to Manage apps On the left side. You will now be able to see a list of your apps connected to Google Drive on the right side.

4. For any application that you think is using storage, click Choices and select Remove hidden data from the app.

5. Click the Delete when you are prompted for a confirmation to proceed with the removal of the application data.

Thank you for reading.

With the optimization methods listed, you should have been able to free up a good amount of space on your drive to allow for new uploads. This will also save you from having to pay for additional storage. Do comment and let us know if you were able to maximize your Google Drive storage with the tips in this article.