I know firsthand that the offers that Google launches for your One plan cheaper are attractive. Paying a couple of euros a month so that the company does not bother you with warnings that you have little storage left is perfectly valid and you immediately get 100 GB so you can use it however you want. However, although it may not seem like a big deal, it ends up being a small “phantom expense” that we can easily avoid if we change our spending habits a little. cloud storage.
In the vast majority of cases, the main culprit that causes us to have consumed almost all of the 15 GB that Google makes available to us for free is email. And the good thing is that they exist ways to almost immediately empty our inbox and have that free storage back. Below these lines we indicate some recommendations that will help you.
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The problem is in your inbox
If you check what takes up the most space in your Google account, it is quite likely that you will be surprised: Gmail is usually the biggest storage hog. Other times, it is also Google Photos that gives the most trouble with this, but in the case of Gmail, emails with attachments accumulate for years, and most of them are perfectly expendable: automatic notifications, old invoices, newsletters that you never read, etc.
If your work depends to a certain extent on being very aware of the email, as happens to me, you find thousands of emails of press releases, presentations and, in short, material that arrives, takes up space and you don’t open it again.
The good thing is that Google gives you very specific tools to locate those emails that we do not need and delete them in bulk. Between that and some tips to filter your inbox, you will be able to empty a very important part of the free storage that Google gives you in a simple way.
The starting point: Google’s storage manager
Before you get to work with Gmail, there’s one place worth going first: Google’s storage manager, accessible directly from this website. You can also get to it by clicking on the storage tab in Drive and clicking on “Free up space”, an option included in the Drive, Photos or Gmail app.
This page shows how much space you have occupied and offers two key sections: one with personalized suggestions to free up space (such as deleting spam emails, large files or heavy attachments, indicating how much can be gained in each case) and another with shortcuts to the specific management of Drive, Gmail and Google Photos.
It’s a good way to get a general idea of the picture before acting: at a glance you can see which service is consuming the most and where to start cleaning.
How to find and delete what matters most in Gmail
If you’ve noticed that Gmail is taking up quite a bit of your cloud storage, the next step is to take action. After having deleted the emails that the Google One system itself suggested in the previous step, you can continue on your own using advanced filters that Gmail offers you, going for the heaviest emails first. To do this you can start by writing in the Gmail search engine ‘larger:15MB‘ (without the quotes) and so you will see all the emails that exceed that size. You can adjust the number depending on what you want to find: larger:5MB, larger:10MBor whatever value you prefer. It is a quick way to identify the messages that take up the most space with minimal effort.
It is one thing to identify them, and quite another to know if they are really important to you or not. Going one by one is a bit of a hassle, but for example it helps me a lot to know if the email is from a long time ago or not. That’s why I also use date filters. This way, if what you want is to go also old, the command before:YYYY/MM/DD shows messages sent or received before a certain date. You can even combine both commands to locate old and heavy emails at the same time.
Another very practical option is to search directly by attachments. Wearing has:attachment larger:10M All emails with attachments larger than 10 MB appear in the search bar. If you want to tune more, filename:.pdf larger:5M specifically locates emails with PDF attachments that weigh more than that amount, and older_than:2y has:attachment Filter out those that have attachments and have been in your tray for more than two years. Attached files (photos, PDFs, videos, documents) are usually responsible for the storage filling up much faster than expected.
Search your keywords
Beyond the commands that Gmail offers you, you can also use searches that serve you personally. In my case, for example, when I have a long list of press releases that I have already read, I simply type ‘ndp’ or ‘press release’ in the search engine and I will easily have a whole long list of press releases waiting to be deleted. Then you just need to pull the trigger.
Once you have identified all the emails you want to delete, click on the selection square in the upper left corner to mark them all, click on ‘Select all conversations that match this search‘ so you can mark them all and not just the first 50, and then pull the trigger.
If you know exactly what you DON’T want to delete, you can move it to its own label or mark it as featured before mass deleting the rest. That way you don’t risk losing anything important.
Don’t forget to empty the trash
When you have identified and deleted all the emails, you will have to pay a visit to the trash. And the emails that you have deleted do not disappear immediately: they are sent to the trash, where stay for 30 days before being permanently deleted automatically. As long as they’re there, they still count toward your storage quota.
If you want to recover space immediately, inside the trash you will find the “Empty the trash now” option, which deletes all the contents permanently. The same applies to the spam folder: Accessing that section, the “Delete all spam messages now” button appears to empty it at once.
Important note: After deleting a large number of files, it typically takes 48 to 72 hours for Google systems to accurately update the storage space. So don’t be alarmed if the counter doesn’t go down immediately. Normally it is a matter of minutes, but there are times it may take longer, depending on the volume removed.
A simple routine that changes things
You can consider whether to do a mass cleaning every x amount of time or, if you have already organized yourself with the first mass cleaning, adopt a small habit that when you receive an email, take it to the trash or move it to a personalized tray or label it if it is important to you. Personally, I opt for the latter, since this way you have stricter control over what you receive and what does not, but I understand that for many people it may involve a more or less greater effort if the number of emails is excessive.
With this routine, and applying searches by size and date periodically, it is perfectly possible stay within the 15 GB free without paying anything to Google. It is not the most comfortable option in the world, but it does not require any special effort once it becomes a habit. And in exchange, you get rid of a subscription that in most cases does not provide anything that you cannot achieve simply by better managing what you already have.
Of course, if you use Google Photos a lot, it is perfectly understandable that you opt for some of the storage plans that the company offers you. Unless you also want to keep an eye on others alternatives to store your photos or, if you want to go further, to detoxify completely of Google services.
Cover image | appshunter.io
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