When Google announced the end of its unlimited photos storage everyone felt that someone near and dear to them had betrayed them. While the inevitable is going to happen one day we can at least delay it and avoid the expense of the privilege of the seamless backup experience. Although most of us are not heavy photographers to fill the 15GB space with the compressed quality right away, I am seeing the storage filling and the concern has come to the point that I have to take some active steps to manage my storage. While Google did betray us, it has also provided some tools to manage the storage. Today we are going to take a look at some of these tools.
1. Upload quality: The photos app offers different qualities to upload. Setting this to other than the original will go a long way. I have set it to storage saver which is 16MP and has the most details in the compression. The express one will compress to 3MP resolution which I think is too much and not usable after compression.
2. Manage Storage: After clicking on the profile icon, click on the account storage which will then take you to the storage manager of photos. On the top, it will show you how much time you have to fill the storage depending on the usage style. Then it will show you the suggestions to delete some photos like large videos, blurry photos, other apps and screenshots. I found it very helpful to delete the large files. I found out some unnecessary videos were backed up which I did not need.
3. Clean up Gmail and Drive: Next, you will see the option to clean the email and drive storage too. It will show you the large attachments and the files in the drive which also counts against the 15GB storage. It will show you the option to delete spam mails, deleted mails and drive files.
4. Monitor storage: after cleaning up monitor the storage as this is not a permanent solution but just a way to delay the process. As all the photos get uploaded to the storage, folders should be selected carefully which need to be uploaded. The folders such as WhatsApp gifs and stickers are not needed and even some apps make their folders to keep image files which should be removed from the backup.
So enjoy the freed-up storage which will last a couple of months more sadly. Or you always have the option to buy the overpriced cloud for the privilege of accessing it anywhere or get a local harddrive which could be more practical in long run if you access the photos less often.
Some Harddrive options
