6 Quick Ways to Free Up Google Storage 🗑️

September 4, 2025

Running out of space on Gmail or Google Drive? Before reaching for your credit card, here are a few tricks to free up storage and avoid paying for Google One.

Sorry for the jumpscare.

We’ve all seen this dreaded storage warning. With enough persistence, Google is praying that you'll eventually whip out your wallet and commit to a Google One subscription that will last longer than your entire digital existence. Not so fast! With a few clever moves, you can stretch your free storage and delay upgrading for months (or even years).

Here's a quick summary:

1. Manage Google Photos

If you’re anything like me, your photos are full of food photos or concert videos that I promise you will never watch again. Switch your backup setting from “Original Quality” to “High Quality” and delete long videos. Important memories stay, file sizes shrink, and I would bet that you can't tell the difference between an "original quality" and "high quality" photo if you tried. Easy win.

2. Clean Up Google Drive

Drive is sneaky. Mine had duplicate PDFs and an entire folder of blurry high school senior photos. Delete what you don’t need, back up the good stuff on a physical drive, and keep Drive lean. Your future self will thank you.

3. Delete Large Gmail Attachments

Search Gmail for has:attachment larger:10M and you’ll see some of the biggest culprits.
Save anything important (tax documents, family photos) to your computer or external drive, then bulk the rest!

4. Empty the Trash

Fun fact: “deleting” something in Gmail or Drive doesn’t actually reduce your storage usage until you empty the Trash. It’s like shoving clutter in a closet and pretending the house is clean.
Empty the trash on Google Drive and in Gmail and watch your available storage bounce back.

5. Clear Out Gmail Clutter

Although emails typically don't take up much storage, they can definitely build up over time (I'm looking at people with 100k unread emails). Bulk delete marketing/notification/spam emails and unsubscribe from anything you never read. It only takes a few seconds per sender and feels surprisingly cathartic.

6. Automate With Clear My Spam

And finally, the lazy option 😅 — let Clear My Spam do the Gmail filtering, unsubscribing, deletion, and cleanup for you. It's easy to use, incredibly effective, and costs way less than Google One over the long term.

I've been using Gmail + Google Drive for well over a decade and still have not given in to Google One. With a few minutes of cleanup (or some automated help), you can reclaim your space and skip the monthly bill.

And if nothing else, you’ll probably rediscover some weird old gems.

Happy decluttering ✌️