Google Drive offers 15 GB of free storage, but that space can run out faster than you might think. But you don’t have to rush to buy extra storage. With a few simple cleanup steps, you can quickly reclaim space and make room for what really matters.
See What’s Taking Up Space in Your Account
When your Google Drive starts running out of storage space, the first instinct is usually to delete large files stored there. However, many people overlook that Drive’s 15 GB of free storage is also shared across Gmail and Google Photos. This means that the real culprit behind your full storage might not even be the Drive itself.
To find out what’s taking up the most space, visit the Google One storage page. There, you’ll see a detailed breakdown of how much storage each service—Drive, Gmail, and Photos—is using. Once you know where the bulk of your data is stored, you can focus your cleanup efforts on where they matter most, rather than wasting time deleting a few small files.
Find and Remove Large Files From Google Drive
If you find that Google Drive is using the most storage on your Google One page, start by cleaning up space there. Often, it’s taken up by large files you no longer need, duplicate items, old backups, or even zipped folders you forgot to delete. Thankfully, Google Drive makes it easy to find and remove such files.
To do this, open Google Drive and go to the ‘Storage’ tab on the left sidebar. Then, click on ‘Storage Used’ to sort files from largest to smallest. This will help you quickly identify what’s consuming space. You can also filter files by type—such as videos, compressed folders, or forms—to refine your search and delete only what you no longer need.
Similarly, there are “orphaned files” — files you’ve added to a shared folder owned by someone else that has since been deleted. Even though these files no longer appear in your main Drive list, they still occupy storage space. For this reason, you should 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, there are several ways to free up space. First, if you’re backing up photos and videos in “Original Quality,” consider switching to “Storage Saver” (formerly called High Quality). This mode slightly 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 navigate to ‘Manage Storage’ to delete unnecessary items, such as blurry photos, screenshots, or large, outdated videos.
For your most important high-resolution photos, consider transferring them to an external drive to avoid using cloud storage.
Clear Out Large Attachments in Gmail
If you discover that Gmail is using a large portion of your Google storage, it’s likely due to old emails with hefty attachments that have built up over time. Deleting those unnecessary emails can free up valuable storage space, leaving more room for Google Drive and Google Photos, which share the same storage quota.
Thankfully, Gmail makes it easy to find such emails. Simply open Gmail and type has:attachment larger:10MB in the search bar. This filters emails with large attachments. Review the results, delete any 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’d rather not clean up storage for each Google service individually, you can use Google One’s Storage Manager. When you open it, you’ll see cleanup suggestions for items like blurry photos, screenshots, emails with large attachments, and large Drive files. Click “Review” to browse through these items, select what you no longer need, and delete them directly.
For a deeper cleanup, review the storage breakdown for each service. Each section provides filters to help you free up space more effectively. For example, delete spam, trash, or emails with large attachments to reclaim Gmail storage. Likewise, remove unsupported videos, large media files, and other unnecessary data to recover additional space.
Empty the Trash in All Google Apps
Since you’ve likely deleted files from Google Drive, emails from Gmail, and photos from Google Photos during cleanup, keep in mind that they remain in the Trash for 30 days and still take up storage space until permanently deleted. To actually reclaim that 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, head to the “Trash” tab, and click “Empty Trash” to clear it out.
Once permanently deleted, the freed-up space will be reflected in your storage. You should regularly clear the trash to permanently remove large deleted files.
Running out of Google Drive storage doesn’t mean you need to delete important files. Using the tips above, you can pinpoint what’s taking up space and safely remove unnecessary files while optimizing settings to reclaim storage without deleting anything important. You should also regularly review and clear your storage to ensure you always have enough room.
If the steps above don’t free up enough space in your Google Drive and you find the 15 GB from the free plan insufficient, you can always upgrade to a paid storage plan.