Storage used and free storage

Info about storage used and available storage

You can find info about storage used and files using most storage in different places. It's not clear why there are so many, partially overlapping, but none is complete. It's recommended to look at all of them.

How to recover storage

  • Delete items, and empty the trash.
    This is the only way to recover storage used by Gmail or Drive.
    There are many complaints that     it may take very long before the storage is recovered after deleting photos. Also note that, when you empty the trash, there is no way back. It is strongly recommended to have a real backup of your photos before you start deleting.

  • Use "Recover storage" on https://photos.google.com/settings. That will convert ALL (it's all or nothing) photos/videos to "Storage saver" quality, using substantially less storage. Save the ones you want to keep in original size somewhere else before you use this option.

  • The folder "Google Photos" in Google Drive starts using storage when the corresponding photos in Google Photos are deleted. Thus when you delete from Photos you may also have to delete the Google Photos folder in https://drive.google.com/drive/my-drive if you have one.

  • Delete unsupported videos on https://photos.google.com/unsupportedvideos (or via "Settings")

  • Check on https://get.google.com/albumarchive whether there are no photos/videos that are not shown in Google Photos, for example from Hangouts, which may use storage.

Google Photos has no live help, but