Google offers 15 GB free storage space at account level to manage all your free stuffs. This includes the content in your Gmail, Google Drive documents and Google Photos. If you are not managing your emails properly, the size can quickly grow up and reach the free limit. Similarly, when you have large junk of files in Drive and Photos, it will occupy the overall storage and restrict your Gmail when the limit is reached. If you are stuck with high storage space in Gmail, here we will explain how to clean up Gmail to free up storage space.
Google One Cloud Storage
Google One is a subscription-based cloud storage which replaced the earlier Google Drive service model. You can login to Google One and manage all your Google account’s storage needs in one place. The free plan of 15 GB is set as your current account limit for Gmail and this limit will be applied at account level to restrict the use other services like Google Drive and Photos.
To view the current status of your Gmail storage and clean up the junk, you can use the Storage manager tool offered by Google as part of Google One service. You can access the Google One Storage Manager using different options.
Access Storage Manager from Mobile App
- Open Gmail app in your iPhone or Android smartphone.
- Tap on the profile icon showing on the top right corner of the app.
- You will see a cloud icon showing the size currently used at your account level out of 15 GB free space.
- Tapping on the cloud icon will show the details of storage used by Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos separately.
- Tap on “Clean up space” button to open the Google One site on the browser and go to the storage section.
- You may need to login again on the browser to use Storage Manager.
Open Storage Manager from Desktop
- Login to your Gmail account and click on your profile icon showing on top right corner of the screen.
- Select “Manage your Google Account” button.
- This will take you to your Google Account and go to “Payments & subscriptions” tab from the sidebar.
- Find “Account storage” section and click on “Manage storage” link showing at the bottom of that section.
Directly Accessing Google One Service
Whether you use mobile app or the browser, managing cloud storage will take you to Google One website. Therefore, you can also directly go to Google One site and login with your account to see the current status of the storage details.
The “Home” section will show the current consumed space out of 15 GB. You can also find the size that you can clean up under “Clean up space” box.
View Current Storage Usage of Gmail
Go to “Storage” tab in Google One site to find the detailed usage of storage space in your Google account. It will show how much GB you have used for Gmail, Photos and Google Drive documents.
Clean Up Gmail with Google One Storage Manager
Scroll down a bit and you will see a “Get your space back” box. To review and clean up the Gmail storage, click on “Free up account storage” link.
On the next screen, you will see three major sections to clean up your Gmail and other storage spaces.
- Discarded items
- Large items
- Other items like unsupported videos
Below the title of each section, you can find the estimated size of storage you can free up.
Deleting Discarded Items in Gmail
Discarded item section contains deleted and spam emails in your Gmail account along with deleted files in Google Drive Trash. If there are optimization possible, Google will show the amount of space you can free up under each item. First, click on the “Review and free up……” link showing in “Deleted emails” box.
This will open your Gmail and automatically apply the “Delete emails” filter. Since these emails are already deleted by you, there should not be much review required. Any way, you can go through the list of emails and click on “Delete All” link showing on top right corner to permanently delete them to free up the space.
Similarly, you can review the spam emails and delete them all at once to free up some space.
Review Large Items in Gmail
The large items section will show all your emails with large file attachments. Click on “Review and free up…….” link in the Gmail box to filter emails in your Gmail account with large file attachments.
You can review the emails and delete them if they are not required to clean up your Gmail account.
Other Options to Get Storage Space
If cleaning up deleted/span emails and large attachments do not free up enough space in your Gmail account, then most probably you consume space from Google Drive or Photos. Since storage manager shows the usage of these apps also, you can easily review your files/photos and delete unnecessary items. Also, make sure to check “Other items” category to delete if you have any unsupported large video files.
If you need more storage space after cleaning up, the only option is to upgrade your account. The basic plan will cost you $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year for 100 GB storage which you can share with up to 5 members.
The highest plan is of 2 TB which will cost you $99.99 per year. This is an ultimate plan if you are primarily using Google cloud for all your storage purposes. It includes a VPN for Android and iOS, premium Google Workspace apps with 10% money back credit for all purchases you make in Google Store.
