When it comes to your Google account, did
you know your storage is shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos? Well, it is. In other words, it’s not just your Google
Drive files, but your Google Photos and Gmail that count towards your overall Google Drive
storage too. I think it’s about time we quickly clear
up storage space. <branded logo intro> Hey friends! I’m Tasia Custode and in this video, I’m
going to show you how to free up Google Drive storage. There are lots of ways to do this and it’s
easier than you think. So let’s go. So let’s head to drive.google.com to access
our Google Drive. If you’ve got a free Google account, you’re
working with about 15GB of Google Drive storage, but these tips will work the same no matter
how much storage space you have. So first, let’s go over how to see what’s
using up your Google Drive storage and how to clear files from Google Drive. You’ll have a snapshot on the left of Google
Drive indicating how much of your storage is in use. If you click on ‘storage’ on the left,
you’ll get a snapshot of the files using your Drive Storage. This is great because you can get a quick
glimpse of the big stuff, and you can quickly select those files to delete right from here. But, we can drill down even further than that
and really see what’s taking up the most space - and let Google do most of the heavy
lifting for us. So I’m going to switch over to another Google
account right now so you can see the whopping amount of storage that’s in use, even though
I’ve purchased more storage. We’re going to click on ‘clean up space’. This is going to open up your storage manager
page in Google One that should look something like this. Think of this like your storage command center. Here, is where you can clear Google Drive
storage fast because you can quickly free up space from Gmail, Drive, and Photos - right
from this one central spot. We’ll have suggested items at the top, complete
with how much storage space those items are taking up. So your items may be a bit different, but
they will be things like spam emails, emails in trash, unsupported video files, large photos,
and videos. All you have to do is click on review in any
of the suggested items. So, I’ll review large photos and videos
since that is taking up a whopping 41+GB of space on my account. What can I say, I take a lot of photos and
videos. So here are all the large photos and videos
organized for me that I can review, without me having to have manually gone into Google
Photos and scroll endlessly through years worth of photos and videos. You can scroll through and click to preview
a file so you know whether or not you want to delete it. To delete any of the files, just select them
using the toggle and then click on ‘move to trash’ in the top right. Back in our storage manager, let’s review
spam emails. Here we can toggle on individual spam emails
or delete all in one go right at the top. Alternatively, you could also click here near
the top to locate emails with large attachments. Then, just review the large attachments and
delete what you don’t need. Bet you didn’t know you could access your
Gmail files from outside of Gmail like that, did ya? Google makes it so easy to clear Google Drive
storage fast. So that’s a really quick way to free up
Google Drive storage via Google One, but if you really want to dig around further, we
can do this same thing manually, and luckily still quickly. Let’s start with clearing Gmail space…but
from Gmail itself. Rather than spending hours and hours clicking
through all your old emails, from oldest to newest, or even searching for specific senders,
and deleting content that way, there are a few quicker ways to free up space. The first thing I like to do is take a quick
peek at the other tabs - the promotions and social tabs. Typically these can be bulk deleted unless,
of course, it’s something important like a shipping confirmation you need to keep. And bulk deleting is really easy, just click
the select all toggle at the top and hit delete. Next, click on ‘more’ and then head to
your spam folder from Gmail itself. This is handy if your Google One did not suggest
spam emails for you. Again, you can bulk delete all in one go here. But the real winner for gaining space in Gmail
is found in your search bar. You really want to quickly find big files,
the ones that are taking up all the space. So, in the search bar, simply type: has:attachment
larger:25MB. Or whatever size you want. Gmail doesn’t let you send files larger
than 25MB, so that’s a great place to start. This will easily allow you to find all the
emails with large attachments. Once you’ve found the emails you can delete,
select them with the toggle box to the left - or bulk delete using the main toggle above
those. And remember, you have to empty your trash
once you’re done deleting emails. Gmail will hold deleted emails for 30 days
in your trash before clearing, so if you need that space now, empty it out, using the empty
trash now option. Once you empty the trash, poof, those emails
are gone forever and there is no recovering them. I’ve got some other tips on how to quickly
clear Gmail space. You can watch those via the link in the description
below. So now let’s talk about how to clear Google
Photos storage manually from Google Photos. If you use Google Photos a lot, that can take
up a ton of Google Drive storage, like you see for me. To access your Google Photos, head to photos.google.com
and again click on storage on the left. Here, at the top, you’ll get an estimate
on how long it’ll take you to run out of storage, which is super helpful. But, you’ll also have a quick section here
of items to review and delete. These include large files, blurry photos,
screenshots and more. So if you want to quickly review your large
photos and videos, just click on that and then select which ones you’d like to delete. So this is similar to how you’d do it in
one fell swoop in Google One, but here you can get more granular. And remember to delete your photos trash once
you’ve cleared out the space. This is crucial because Google Photos actually
keeps trashed photos for 60 days before deleting them forever. So, from Google Photos, head to your trash
bin from the left. Here, you can empty trash in one go from the
top right. Another thing to keep in mind is that a lot
of this can be done on mobile too. If you want a snapshot of your storage you
can do that right from the Google Drive app on iOS or Android. Tap on the hamburger menu in the top left,
then tap on storage. Here, you’ll get your snapshot if what’s
taking up space. Tap on ‘clean up space’. On iOS, you’ll be taken to your storage
manager at one.google.com. You can also get the Google One app. This works the same way though where you can
clean up suggested items really easily, or clean up by service. On Android, if say you have a Pixel with the
Google One app already installed, when you tap on ‘clean up space’ the Google One
app is automatically opened for you. Here, you can follow those same steps we did
from desktop at the beginning of the video. Ah, digital cleansing is really that easy. So that’s how to clear Google Drive storage
fast. Now I want to hear from you. Have you run out of storage? Have you tried these tips? Let everyone know in the comments below. If you liked this video, I want to know so
give it a like, a share or leave a comment below. You can click right here to subscribe to my
channel and right here and here to watch even more Gmail content. You know you want to! See ya next time!
