How to Free Up Storage Space on Google Photos – Guide
All photos you upload in original quality to Google Photos count towards your storage quota. You can quickly release up space in Google Photos by simply converting all uploaded photos from original quality to high quality. This can be done in Google Photos on the web. Navigate to the Google Photos website on your computer and click the Settings icon in the top right corner next to your profile picture. In the settings menu, click on the Recover Storage option. Google Photos will give you an overview of how much space you will get back by converting your original photos and videos in high quality. Your videos will also be compressed to 1080p to save space. Keep in mind that this method will only work until June 1, 2021. When Google’s new storage policy goes into effect, all high-quality photos uploaded to Google Photos will also count towards your account’s storage quota. You can export your existing photos and videos from Google Photos at full resolution, so you have a copy before compressing them in your account to save space.
Disable Photo Backup for WhatsApp and Other Device Folders
Google Photos may come back automatically up photos and videos from WhatsApp, Instagram and other folders on your device. While this may be useful for some, these media backups also take up storage space. If you get a lot of unwanted media on WhatsApp or you just don’t want your Instagram posts to come back up for Google Photos, it’s a good idea to disable backing up these folders on your device to save space. To do this on Android, open the Google Photos app on your device, tap your profile picture in the top right, and choose Photos Settings. Then go to Back up & sync > Back up device folders and disable all irrelevant folders which you don’t want any media backups to happen. Unfortunately, this is not an option on iOS due to system limitations. As a workaround, you should open the app you don’t want to backup up images to (like WhatsApp) and turn off auto-save media so that these images don’t sync to Google Photos.
Delete unsupported videos
Google Photos supports up a wide variety of photo and video formats. This includes RAW files from select Canon, Sony and Nikon cameras, MKV videos and much more. If you use multiple cameras or upload videos from multiple sources, it is possible that at least some of the media files are not supported by the platform. All unsupported media files will continue up space in Google Photos, so it’s better to delete them. To delete all incompatible videos from Google Photos, open the Google Photos website on your computer and click the Settings icon in the upper right corner next to your profile picture. On the Settings page, you will see Unsupported Videos option from where you can delete all incompatible videos for free up space in Google Photos. Be sure to empty the trash after that if you delete particularly large files.
Remove useless screenshots
if you come back up screenshots from your device to Google Photos, it’s a good idea to delete them too. Over the years, you’ve probably accumulated a lot of useless screenshots that are no longer relevant. You can easily find all screenshots uploaded to Google Photos by searching for “Screenshots”. Then proceed to delete the ones you no longer consider relevant.
empty the trash
Any photos or videos that you delete from Google Photos are in the trash (also called the trash in some regions) for up to 60 days. Meanwhile, the garbage itself is capable of containing up to 1.5GB of deleted media. If you want to release immediately up space in Google Photos, empty the trash to recover a decent amount of space. This is particularly important after deleting useless screenshots, photos and videos from your photo library by following the steps mentioned above.
Resize photos before uploading
if you come back up photos taken from a DSLR to Google Photos, it is best to resize them before uploading. Uploading 30-40 MP resolution photos to Google Photos will only take up precious space in your Google account – they will be of little use. By reducing the resolution of these photos, you will greatly reduce their file size and make them better for backup. up for 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 videos before uploading them or use a different file format to potentially reduce the file size.
Delete files from Google Drive and Gmail
Any file or document you support up for Google Drive also counts towards your Google account’s storage quota. So if you want to free up even more storage space in Google Photos, you should also delete junk and other unnecessary files from Google Drive. You can also transfer files from your primary Google Drive account to a secondary account without resending them and save space in the process. The same also applies to Gmail files that you use in Gmail up space in your Google account. But you can always delete old emails with large attachments for free up space in your Google account. be sure to come back up your Gmail account locally before wiping up large emails in Gmail.
Final note
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