Google Photos Storage Hacks: How I Freed Up 13GB in Minutes
A writer for MakeUseOf recently found themselves facing a problem common to many Google Photos users. With storage growing at an alarming rate, it's easy to get caught up in upgrading plans rather than taking control of one's own data. Pankil Shah, the writer, chose a different route and spent some time cleaning up his Google Photos account.
The first step was to use Google Photos' built-in clean-up suggestions. This feature can be accessed by tapping the profile icon in the app, selecting 'Clean up space,' and then browsing through the large photos and videos section. Pankil was able to free up 13GB of storage within minutes.
Another strategy employed was switching the backup quality to 'Storage saver.' This setting automatically lowers the quality of photos and videos backed up to Google Photos, but doesn't blindly compress everything. If a photo is larger than 16MP, it resizes it down to 16MP, while videos above 1080p are scaled down to 1080p.
A third tip was to move WhatsApp backups to a secondary Google account. This can be done by adding the second account to WhatsApp and backing up everything there, then deleting the backup from the primary account.