Google Photos Hoarding Storage Space Without User's Knowledge
Google Photos has been quietly hoarding storage space on users' devices without their knowledge. The issue arises when the service saves more junk than necessary, including screenshots, blurry photos, and videos that take up a significant amount of space.
The primary problem is that Google Photos tends to save high-resolution files, which can quickly eat into available storage. For instance, 4K videos may look great on local storage but are not ideal for cloud storage due to their large file size.
Another issue is unsupported videos uploaded after February 24, 2020, which still count towards the user's storage quota despite being unplayable in Google Photos.
To mitigate this problem, users can switch to compressed formats, such as storage saver, which resizes images and reduces video quality. However, even with these changes, deleting files does not always free up space immediately, as Google Photos retains deleted items in the trash for up to 50 days before they are permanently removed.