Google Photos Audit Reveals Surprising Culprit Behind Phone Storage Woes

I recently found myself struggling to manage my phone's storage space, which was rapidly filling up due to a large collection of photos and videos. To address this issue, I decided to audit my Google Photos storage and see what was consuming all that space.

A quick scan using the Clean tab in Files by Google revealed that my device storage was cluttered with duplicate images, old screenshots, and leftover files. A closer look showed that large videos were the primary culprit, taking up hundreds of megabytes per minute. I discovered that a handful of short video clips had accumulated over time, consuming more space than thousands of photos.

To free up storage space, I used the Clean tab to identify and delete unnecessary files. This feature allowed me to see exactly how much space each category was using, making it easier to decide what to keep and what to delete. I also learned that deleting a photo from Google Photos would remove both the local copy and the cloud version, so I had to be careful when selecting which photos to delete.