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How to quickly and easily get more space in Google Drive
In This Article
As the storage limit for Google Drive is just 15GB and shared between Workplace, Gmail and Google Photos, it’s a common frustration to find yourself out of space.
Luckily there are workarounds to quickly get more space for your files, without needing to upgrade to a Google One account.
Read on to see our tips on how to get more space in Google Drive.
What you’ll need:
The short version:
Step1
Open Google Drive
There are a few ways you can open Google Drive. If you use Google Chrome you can simply type Drive into the search bar or open it via a new tab, as shown here.
Step2
Select Settings
In the top right, click on the icon and select Settings.
Step3
Click on Manage Storage
Here you will see how much storage space you’ve used. Remember, the free limit for Google Drive is 15GB.
Step4
Sort files by size
Although this isn’t necessary, we’d recommend sorting files from largest to smallest so you can quickly sift through the bigger and potentially no longer needed documents.
Step5
Select files you can either download or delete
To select multiple files at once, either hold down the Control or Command key while clicking on the desired files. Once you’ve made your selection, you can either download onto your computer and then delete the files, or just permanently delete them.If you do decide to download files before deleting them, select the download icon as shown here. This will download your files into a compressed Zip file onto your computer.
Step6
Move files to bin
Whether you download your files or not, you can then move the items to the bin. To do this, click on the bin icon and then select Move to bin as shown here.
Step7
Empty bin
Select Bin from the side panel.Before emptying the bin, take care to have a look through to ensure you don’t accidentally delete an important file. Once you’re happy, select Empty bin on the right-hand side.
Troubleshooting
The easiest way to expand the 15GB Google Drive limit is to upgrade to a Google One subscription, which offers you up to a massive 2TB of storage for a monthly fee. The fee depends on how much storage space you want, as the lowest option is 100GB for £1.59, 1TB is £7.99 and 2TB is £18.99 per month.
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Jess joined the Trusted Reviews team early in 2024, after working for almost three years in lifestyle and technology PR. Using the skills gained from her previous role, Jess has taken on a new challen…
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Why trust our journalism?
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
