Freeing up space on Google Photos

Sooner rather than later the time has come when another person asks me what to do when they are running out of space on Google Photos and therefore on Gmail.

Well, according to Google’s announcements, from June 2021, all photos uploaded to Google Photos are included in the space we have at our disposal (by default 15GB).

Pisałem o tym tutaj: > I wrote about it here: No more free storage on Google Photos.

In November 2020, after the changes were announced, Google estimated that “80% of users will be able to store up to 3 years of photos within 15GB without having to purchase a larger package”. All provided that we store them in a compressed version, currently called Storage saver.

Of course, I already knew this was a very optimistic assumption. As you can see, some users started approaching the limit after more than six months. I’m referring to users I know who have the basic 15GB plan, as well as those who have purchased the additional 100GB.

In its assumption, Google deliberately took into account the current (at the moment) market situation. Over time, however, our cameras take photos in increasingly higher resolution, which means that they take up more and more space.

If we also take Live Photos photos, a short video is saved in addition to the photo, and so one photo and one video are on average 3MB!

Despite the fact that we have set all photos to be uploaded (and stored) in compressed form by default, sometimes this does not happen.

If we have recently set up a new phone or installed the Google Photos application from scratch, to our surprise we may notice that by default photos were saved in full resolution, which means our space disappears in the blink of an eye.

Each photo taken is about 4-5MB. The holiday season is behind us and it is enough that we took over 100 photos during it and we no longer have almost half a gig of disk space.

Google did this somewhat intentionally. Every time we change phones or log in to Google Photos, we have to remember to switch to Storage saver so we don’t one day be surprised that we run out of space.

However, before you decide to reach into your wallet to purchase an additional, higher package, it is worth performing a simple procedure in the Google Photos options to check whether we can free up some space by compressing what is already uploaded there.

Personally, my current package is 200GB, shared within a family group, where all members have this space at their disposal and I only pay once, and despite all the efforts, my usage is over 50%.

Recently, on one account, I went from a full Google account to over 15GB using this method to gain 12GB of free space!

Size of uploaded photos and videos

From our computer, go to the Google Photos Settings.

If we do not have the Storage Saver option checked, we make a change.

Google Photos - Settings - Storage saver

Then click on the Manage Storage button.

Data storage - Personal estimate

On the next page, we will get information about how and where we are using our disk space, along with an estimate of how long the space will last.

Scroll down the page until we see the Recover storage section.

Storage Management - Recover storage

Here we need to click on the text Learn more, after which we will receive information about what this option does, and after checking the box next to the text I understand, we will activate the Compress existing photos and videos button.

Compress existing photos and videos

Thanks to this, all photos that were uploaded in Original quality will be compressed, and all those that can be optimized will also be passed through the algorithm.

This procedure may take a while. While the compression is in progress, we will see the text Compressing… it may take a few hours.

We can leave this page and return to it later.

By noting how much data we had at the beginning, we can later compare how much space we have regained with this procedure.

If the above procedure did not help, we still do not have much free space, then it is worth considering a higher package.

While deleting unnecessary photos is not a great solution, it is also worth seeing what else is eating up our valuable space.

Remember, deleting photos uploaded to Google Photos before June 2021 won’t restore any storage space, as they don’t count toward your available storage, so there’s no point in deleting them. Additionally, when you delete photos, you’ll be informed how much space you’re restoring.

It is worth noting here that the space on your Google account is divided not only between photos, but also between Google mail and Google Drive. Sometimes it is worth deleting old, unnecessary emails with attachments to recover valuable gigabytes.

Detailed information on how much space we have available and what is using it can be found on the Google storage management page.

Best regards.