7 Ways to Free Up Storage Space on Google Photos

Need to reduce the amount of space you're using in Google Photos? Here are ways to reclaim storage space.

While Google Photos has proudly offered free high-quality photo storage for years, that's changing in 2021. Beginning June 1, all "high-quality" photos you upload to Google Photos will start to count against your Google account storage.

If you relied on the free storage and are now worried about running out of space, you can prepare yourself and avoid paying for more storage by freeing up space in Google Photos.

Follow the below tips to free up storage space in Google Photos—as a bonus, you'll also clean up your photo library while at it.

1. Convert to High-Quality Photos

All the photos you've uploaded in original quality to Google Photos count against your storage quota. You can quickly free up space in Google Photos by simply converting all the photos uploaded in original quality to high quality. This can be done from Google Photos on the web.

Navigate to the Google Photos website on your computer, then click on the Settings icon at the top-right corner near your profile photo. In the settings menu, click on the Recover storage option. Google Photos will provide an overview of how much space you'll recover by converting your original photos and videos to high quality. Your videos will also all be compressed to 1080p to save space.

Keep in mind that this method will only work until June 1, 2021. Once the new storage policy from Google comes into effect, all high quality photos uploaded to Google Photos will also count against your account's storage quota.

You can export your existing photos and videos from Google Photos in full resolution, so you have a copy before compressing them in your account to save space.

2. Disable Photo Backup for WhatsApp and Other Device Folders

Google Photos can automatically back up photos and videos from WhatsApp, Instagram, and other folders on your device. While this can come in handy for some, these media backups also take up storage space.

If you receive a lot of junk media on WhatsApp or simply do not want your Instagram posts to back up to Google Photos, it's a good idea that you disable backup for such folders from your device to save space.

To do this on Android, open the Google Photos app on your device, then tap your profile photo at the top-right corner and choose Photos settings. Then, head over to Back up & sync > Back up device folders and disable all the irrelevant folders from which you do not want any media backup to happen.

Unfortunately, this isn't an option on iOS due to system limitations. As a workaround, you should instead open the app you don't want to back up images for (like WhatsApp) and disable automatic media saving so those images don't get synced to Google Photos.

Read more: How to Stop Automatically Downloading Images on WhatsApp

3. Delete Unsupported Videos

Google Photos supports backing up a wide variety of photos and video formats. These include RAW files from selected Canon, Sony, and Nikon cameras, MKV videos, and more.

If you use a number of cameras or upload videos from many sources, it's possible that at least some of the backed-up media files are not supported by the platform. All unsupported media files will continue to take up space in Google Photos, though, so it's best to delete them.

To delete all unsupported videos from Google Photos, open the Google Photos website on your computer, then click on the Settings icon at the top-right corner near your profile photo.

On the Settings page, you will see the Unsupported videos option from where you can delete all incompatible videos to free up space in Google Photos. Make sure to empty the trash after this if you delete particularly large files.

4. Remove Junk Screenshots

If you back up your device screenshots to Google Photos, it's a good idea to delete these as well. Over the years, you've likely accumulated a lot of junk screenshots that are no longer relevant.

You can easily find all the screenshots you've uploaded to Google Photos by searching for "screenshots." Then proceed to delete the ones you no longer find relevant.

5. Empty the Trash

Any photo or video you delete from Google Photos resides in the trash (also called the bin in some regions) for up to 60 days. Meanwhile, the trash itself is capable of holding up to 1.5GB of deleted media.

If you want to immediately free up space in Google Photos, empty the trash to reclaim a decent amount of space. This is particularly important to do after you have deleted junk screenshots, photos, and videos from your photo library by following the steps mentioned above.

6. Resize Photos Before Uploading

If you back up photos taken from a DSLR to Google Photos, you should ideally resize them before uploading. Uploading 30-40MP resolution photos to Google Photos is only going to take up precious space in your Google account—they will be of little use.

By reducing the resolution of such photos, you will reduce their file size considerably and make them better for backing up to Google Photos. Depending on your use case, you can resize your DSLR photos to around 20-25MP and save a substantial amount of space.

You can also reduce the resolution of the videos before uploading them or use a different file format to potentially reduce the file size.

7. Delete Files From Google Drive and Gmail

Any file or document that you back up to Google Drive also counts against your Google account storage quota. So if you want to free up even more storage space in Google Photos, you should look into deleting junk and other unnecessary files from Google Drive as well.

You can also transfer files from your primary Google Drive account to a secondary account without re-uploading them and save space in the process.

The same also applies to Gmail—files you use in Gmail take up space in your Google account. But you can always delete old emails with large attachments to free up space in your Google account. Make sure to back up your Gmail account locally before cleaning up large emails in Gmail.

Freeing Up Space in Google Photos

You can free up a substantial amount of space in Google Photos by following these tips. This will allow you to back up more photos and videos without having to pay for storage. Before the change, Google also plans to roll out a new tool that lets you easily delete blurry and poor-quality photos to further free up space.

If you are unable to free up a substantial amount of space in Google Photos even after following the steps above, you'll probably need to pay for a Google One storage plan.

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