Google account storage full? – here’s how to solve it without upgrading

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You stopped receiving new emails in your Gmail inbox, and Google says your “account storage is full.” But you don’t know how 15GB of your storage went. This has happened to enough of my older non-techie relatives, and it made me realise there are probably more people out there facing the same issue. 

This happens because your 15GB of Google storage is shared between Gmail, Google Photos, and Google Drive. The culprit here is most likely Google Photos. You see, Google Photos used to be free for all Android users. It is still free, but until June 2021, users could back up their Photos without deducing any storage space from Google Drive. But now, the free benefits are exclusive to Google Pixel owners. However, most Android phones come pre-installed with Google Photos, and the app still backs up the camera roll by default. This is what usually leads to your storage to be full. 

Now, this sounds like Google trying to trick customers into believing that they need more storage and prompt them to buy more. While I’m criticising this practice, I did end up subscribing to Google One. But just because I did doesn’t mean you have to. You can just delete all your photos from Google Photos and stop using it. If that sounds too drastic for you, don’t worry; I’ll teach you how to download everything first. 

But before you get to any of that, identify the root of the problem. Go to the Google One Storage page and confirm that Google Photos is, in fact, taking up most of your storage. Once you’re sure that this is the case, you can proceed. 

How to backup your entire Google Photos library?

You can download your entire photo library from Google Photos very easily.

  1. Go to Google Takeout and make sure you’re signed in with the right Google Account.
  2. Hit “deselect all” and scroll down to Google Photos. 
  3. From there, you can select Google Photos and make sure all your albums are included.
  4. Then scroll down again and click on “next step.”
  5. On the next card, your destination should be “send download link via email.”
  6. For frequency, select “export once.”
  7. File type and size should be “.zip” and “2GB,” but you can customise this if your file system supports larger files.
  8. Then, hit “create export” and wait until the export is complete and ready to download. You will receive an email, but you can also return to the Takeout page and download the files.

How to delete your entire Google Photos library?

Deleting your entire Google Photos library can be time-consuming and, depending on the size of your library, labour-intensive. But bear with me. 

  1. Go to Google Photos from a web browser on a computer.
  2. Select the first photo and start scrolling down slowly. Don’t click on the scroll bar on the right. Instead, do it manually with the mouse wheel or two fingers on your trackpad.
  3. After scrolling every four to five pages, hold the shift key and select another photo. Keep repeating this action until you select the last photo.
  4. Then click on the bin icon in the top right corner and confirm. 
  5. From the left sidebar, go to Bin.
  6. Click on “empty bin” in the top right corner and confirm.

How do you stop automatic backups on Google Photos?

Once your done cleaning up your storage, you need to make sure that it doesn’t fill up again with automatic backups. This is how you’re supposed to do that. 

  1. Go to the Google Photos app on your phone.
  2. Click on your profile picture on the top right.
  3. Go to “Photos settings” then “Backup.”
  4. Toggle off the switch next to Backup.

Once you’re done with the steps, go back to your Google One Storage page and check if you have more storage space available. 

How can you easily delete large files from Google Drive and free up storage?

If your problem is still not solved, chances are you have some large files on your Google Drive. Here’s how to delete them.

  1. Go to Google Drive from a web browser on your computer.
  2. From the left sidebar, go to “Storage.”
  3. There, you will see a list of files using Drive storage and the option to sort them by file size.
  4. You can just select some unnecessary large files and click the bin icon at the top.
  5. Then go to “bin” from the left sidebar and click “empty bin”.

Following these methods should help free up enough space for your emails to come through again. For future reference, remember that Gmail shares the same storage as Google Drive and other services. So, if you’re on your primary Gmail account and don’t wish to upgrade your storage, you need to be conservative about how you use the other Google services. 

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