How To Increase Google Drive Storage For Free?

Google Drive offers 15GB of free storage, shared with Gmail and Google Photos. This limit can be restrictive if you use these services often, making it hard to store important files. Upgrading to a paid plan is an option, but not everyone can or wants to pay for more space. Luckily, there are free ways to increase your storage. We’ll show you how to do this effectively.

Is It Possible To Increase Google Drive Storage For Free?

While Google Drive offers a free 15GB of storage, it can fill up quickly. Here’s the good news: you can maximize your free space without spending a dime!

There are two main approaches:

• A popular method involves using Google’s storage management tools to delete large files and eliminate duplicates.
• Other effective techniques include converting images to high-efficiency formats and organizing email attachments in Gmail.

Regularly checking and improving your storage can boost your Google Drive capacity without having to buy more space. Let’s look into both to help you maximize your Google Drive.

How To Increase Google Drive Storage For Free?

1. Use Multiple Drive Accounts

• You can create multiple free Google accounts.
• Many people use this for personal, casual, and professional emails or other purposes like device-specific accounts or increased storage.
• Each new Google account comes with 15 GB of storage.
• You can theoretically create as many accounts as you want if you’re willing to manage them.
• Google requires a phone number for validation and may limit new account creation if too many are made quickly.
• Having multiple phone numbers might allow for a few extra accounts, but eventually, Google may require a different number or a waiting period.

2. Delete and Clean Up Old and Hidden Files

1. Delete Unimportant Files

a. Delete Unnecessary Files in Google Drive

• Open Google Drive in your web browser to identify the largest files on Google Drive.
• Review and delete any unnecessary files to free up space.

b. Delete Hidden Applications in Google Drive

To remove hidden applications from Google Drive, follow these steps:

• Click on the gear icon in the top right corner of Google Drive and choose “Settings.”
• Next, select “Manage Apps” from the menu.
• Find the application with hidden data and click on the gray “OPTIONS” box beside it.
• Finally, select “Delete hidden app data” to remove the hidden data associated with that application.

c. Clear The Google Drive Trash

• Open Google Drive and select “Trash” or “Bin” from the left sidebar.
• Click on the “Empty trash” button at the top right.
• Confirm by choosing “Delete forever” in the pop-up window to free up space in your Google Drive.

 2. Manage Your Photo Storage

Google Photos shares storage space with Google Drive. Every photo and video backed up in Google Photos counts towards your Google storage. You can save space by converting photos to Google’s “Storage saver” option, which compresses images to 16MP and videos to 1080p.

• Go to Google Photos settings and choose “Storage Saver”.
• Note that this won’t automatically compress your existing photos. To do this, find the “Recover Storage” button in the settings. It will compress many but not all existing videos and photos.

• You can also free up space by clicking “Manage storage”. This shows how much time you have before filling up your storage and helps find and delete blurry photos, screenshots, and other unnecessary images.

3. Clean Up Gmail

Your Gmail emails and attachments occupy storage in your Google Drive. Clearing your inbox, spam, and Gmail trash can help free up Drive space. Consider deleting emails with large attachments to manage your storage efficiently.

• Select the email with the one-time attachment and delete it.
• Open your Spam folder and click “Delete all spam messages now.”
• Open your Trash folder and select “Empty Trash now.”

4. Upload Videos To YouTube

Video files typically take up a lot of storage space. To save them on Google Drive, you can put them on YouTube instead. Then, you can choose to make them “Private” so only you can see them, or “Unlisted” to share them with specific people, like family, friends, or team members.

5. Use Google’s File Format

• Google Drive allows uploading files in their original format without conversion.
• Storing documents in “Google Docs Editor Format” (documents, tables, slides, drawings, etc.) can increase free space on Google Drive.
• Using Google’s format takes up less quota of your Drive space, leaving more room for other files.

• The same principle applies to email attachments when using Google’s format.

6. Remove Shared Folders and Files From Google Drive

• Shared content in a cloud drive doesn’t use your storage unless you move it to your Drive and take ownership.
• To save space, avoid downloading shared files unless necessary for specific needs.
• Adding “Shared with me” to “My Drive” increases your storage usage.

Also Check:

• How To Move Photos From Google Drive To Google Photos?
• How To Upload Or Add Photos To Google Drive?
• How To Download Video From Google Drive?
• How To Backup From Google Drive?

FAQs:

Conclusion

In short, these tips can help you clear up lots of space in your Google Drive without spending any money. Just remember, organizing things a bit can make a big difference! We trust you found this article helpful in maximizing your Google Drive storage.