How to Free Up Space in Google Drive

Source: How to Free Up Space in Google Drive

Received an alert that your Google Drive storage is almost full? If so, it’s time to identify files that are taking up a lot of space, decide which ones you can delete to free up space, and potentially prevent people from sharing files with you in the future.

The process of freeing up space in Google Drive is basically the same whether you have a personal or organizational Google Workspace account. The details of what you see and your options vary only slightly, with one big difference. Personal account holders can use a tool from One Google to identify large files. Anyhow, the real crux of the process is finding files you don’t need and deleting them – from your drive and then from the Trash too. Files in the Recycle Bin count against your storage, so don’t forget to delete them.

Your only other option is to pay for more storage, which starts at a very reasonable $19.99 per year for 100GB. The latest upgrade options point you to Google One, which offers a few benefits beyond storage such as: B. Phone backups and extended support.

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First, evaluate your file removal options

Before deleting any type of files from Google Drive, think about what exactly you want to do with it. For example, you might be able to delete old files, period. They’re old, they’re useless, just delete them, right?

Could be. For some files, you can instead download them first and save a copy elsewhere, e.g. B. on your hard drive, a backup drive (regardless of whether it is an external drive or an online backup system) or another cloud storage service. Once you save another copy, then You can delete them from Google Drive. This option is only practical if you have a lot of storage space available somewhere else.

You could download files to your hard drive, compress them into a ZIP file, delete the originals from Google Drive, and then upload the ZIP file to Google Drive. Let me stress “might” and add that I don’t recommend this trick as it’s very impractical and only marginally effective for freeing up disk space. But you could Do it.

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How to Use Google One Storage Manager (Personal Accounts Only)

For your personal Google Account – ie not a work account – you can visit the Google One Storage Manager page at one.google.com/storage/management. This link is not easily visible anywhere in your account, but it is extremely useful for freeing up space in Google Drive and in your Google Account.

The link takes you to a page with a summary of large files that Google has identified and where they are located, e.g. B. in Drive, Gmail, your spam folder and so on. From there, select a category to target, click the associated text that appears (e.g., “Review and free 2.3MB”), and follow the prompts to select documents, images, or videos for deletion . Finally, when you click the trash can icon to remove them, Google will warn you if what you’re throwing away can’t be recovered. So watch out.

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How to Find and Remove Large Files (Personal and Work Accounts)

If you think the majority of your storage problems stem from your own files as opposed to files other people have shared with you, start this process of finding and removing large files.

1. Sign in to your Google account and navigate to Drive (drive.google.com).
2. Click Storage on the left. It’s next to a cloud icon.
3. The view that opens shows all your files sorted by size. Depending on what type of Google Account you have, you may also see a summary of how your storage is being used across apps, such as: B. the amount used by Gmail, Drive and Photos.
4. Sort files by size so you can look for the largest files to remove first. If you see a particularly large file and aren’t sure what it is, you can preview it by clicking on it.
5. To delete individual files, right-click (or ctrl-click) them and choose Remove. A prompt may appear asking you to confirm that you want to move the file to the Trash. You can also delete files in bulk. Select the first file to delete, hold down Shift, and then select the last one – everything in between will also be selected. Alternatively, hold down the Cmd or Ctrl key while selecting multiple files that are not in a row. When everything you want to delete is highlighted, right-click and choose Remove.
6. The last step is to go to the Recycle Bin, select all the files in it and then right-click to select “Delete Forever”. If you don’t do this step, your files will remain in the Recycle Bin for 30 days and will then be automatically deleted.

There is another route to view the same information. Go to Settings > General > Storage. There you will either see “Show items that are taking up storage” or “Manage storage” depending on what type of Google account you have. Click on either of them and you’ll end up in the same view as above.

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How to remove shared files from Google Drive

If many of your storage problems are due to files that other people have shared with you, you may want to select those files for deletion. I’ll tell you how to do that here, but you may still want to prevent people from sharing files with you in the future, which I cover in the next section.

1. From your main Google Drive view, select Shared with me on the left. You may need to collapse your My Drive folder to see it easily.
2. While you can sort this list of shared files by date (date shared, last modified, last opened, etc.), you unfortunately cannot sort by file size.
3. You may have to search and pick to find files to delete. Select one file or bulk select many, then right-click and choose Remove.

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How to Block Unwanted Shared Files in Google Drive

If you’re fed up with spammers, misguided relatives, and others sharing files with you on Google Drive, you can stop them from doing so in the future.

1. From your main Google Drive view, select Shared with me on the left. You may need to collapse your My Drive folder to see it easily.
2. Identify the person you want to block in the Shared By column.
3. Right-click that person and select Block [name]. The Block option may not appear if the person is part of your Google Workspace organization. If so, you can report them instead.
4. To report someone for sending spam or harmful material, right-click their name and select Report instead. A form will open that you need to fill out to complete the process.

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Check your backups

To prevent more files from accumulating in your Google Drive in the future, check any automated backups you may have set up. Automated backups can come from your desktop or your mobile device. For example, you might have enabled a setting on an Android phone or Google Drive app that automatically backs up every photo and video you take, screenshot you take, and file you save. These files can add up.

For more advice on managing storage and backup, see The Beginner’s Guide to PC Backup and How to Free Up Storage on Your iPhone.

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