How to free up Google storage when it's full

Looking for some tips on how to clean up Google storage? If your account's nearly full, you might start to see backups failing, or in my case, the inability to send and receive new mail.

I think a lot of users forget that the 15 GB storage is actually shared across Drive, Gmail, and Photos, so a bit of strategic cleaning can help you really claw back space and save yourself the upgrade charge.

I’ll show you how to access Google's built-in Storage Manager, and how to do some handy targeted cleaning.

Before you free up Google storage, figure out what's consuming it

It’s amazing how many people didn’t realize this exists, but to get a total overview of your Google storage, go to one.google.com/storage on your Mac or in a browser on your iPhone.

Once you’ve logged in, you can see how your 15 GB free tier is being split across Drive, Gmail, and Photos.

If you’re using the Google One app on Android or iOS, if you go to the Storage tab, and you’ll see the same breakdown. And on Android, one.google.com/storage/management opens the Storage Manager directly.

If you’ve just done a big cleanup and you’re wondering why the numbers haven’t adjusted, there can be a bit of a lag; some forums are saying this could be up to 24–48 hours after deletions, so maybe a little patience is also required here.

Free up Google storage: Photos (usually the biggest offender)

In my experience, Photos is where most people's storage disappears; all those long-forgotten high-res holiday photos and 4K baby videos add up fast.

In Storage Manager (tips above), if you click on Clean up space, you’ll see some suggestions from Google like large photos and videos.

You can also do this in a much more manual way, if you want to feel like you’ve got a bit more control. Go to photos.google.com > Click on Settings ( Gear icon) > Click Manage storage, and choose what you want to delete; Google has a few handy categories there.  I’d personally go for any large videos first; a single three-minute 4K video is often 500+ MB. Then don’t forget to empty your Photos Trash once you’ve finished; otherwise, items stay there for 60 days and are still taking up space.

I can also recommend turning on the Storage saver in your settings; this just saves files at a lower quality, taking up less space.

Clear Google Drive storage

Next up, head to drive.google.com/drive/quota for a size-sorted view of all your Drive files. These are by default in descending order, so all your biggest files should be right at the top.

You’ll probably see old ZIP archives, maybe some forgotten presentations, PDF scans, or WhatsApp backups.

You can go through and carefully remove what you don’t need one by one, or if you want quick cleanup, press Clean up space > Gdrive. Then check the select all box and bulk delete.

Same as photos, make sure you don’t forget to empty your trash; otherwise, these items keep on taking up space and sit there for an extra 30 days.

Another tip: I’d also check your Shared drives; it’s worth checking if you’ve shared any large files that no longer need to be shared.

Clean up Gmail

Gmail is usually an easy place to win back space.

I really like to use the search bar in my Gmail to look for large files, there’s a couple of handy search filters you can try:

• has:attachment larger:10M

• category:promotions older_than:1y

Anything you find can be bulk deleted, but again, I know I keep repeating this, you will need to empty your Trash; same for your Spam folder too. Otherwise, yes, you guessed it, they’re still taking up storage.

Take a look at our full Gmail storage cleanup guide for search-operator power moves here.

If Gmail turns out to be your biggest consumer, and manual search-and-delete feels just too tedious, then I can recommend trying the Email Cleanup feature in CleanMyMac's My Tools.

If you connect your Gmail account, it can get to work quite quickly to group all your inbox into some really useful categories, like type, sender, year, and attachment size.

Then, it’s just a case of reviewing what it finds and choosing what to remove, archive, or unsubscribe from, and nothing is removed without your confirmation. Anything you do end up removing goes to your Gmail Trash (recoverable for 30 days), and your shared Google storage is freed once you empty your Trash. Try CleanMyMac for free — you really can test all features for 7 days.

The big storage consumers

When your Google storage is full, here are other few places to check.

WhatsApp backups (Android only)

In your Google Drive, WhatsApp chat backups are stored there too, so double-check drive.google.com > gear icon > Settings > Manage apps > find WhatsApp > Delete hidden app data to free up hidden Drive space.

Old device backups

Android backups from any of your connected phones you no longer use can also still be taking up space; you can check here: drive.google.com > Settings > Manage app data > review and delete

And finally, just always make sure you actually empty those trash folders. Otherwise, Photos stays for 60 days, Drive and Gmail for 30 days.

Google One storage manager

If I had to make a top four trick to stay under that free 15 GB range, then this would be it.

1. Turn on the Storage saver in Google Photos; this will drastically help save space if you’re a big photo saver.

2. Always aggressively unsubscribe from promotional emails in Gmail.

3. Delete WhatsApp media in chat threads you don't need to keep.

4. Make a habit of emptying your trash every few months.

And if you do decide to upgrade your storage and pay, then Google One's cheapest paid tier is 100 GB.

So there you go; you now know all the tips and tricks on how to clean up Google storage.