Google’s major cloud storage services is about to undergo a drastic change. From the limited space that Gmail offered at the beginning and the function to save all the photos you wanted to Google Photos for free, we are moving into a new era. 

In less than a week these three services will share space and the free accounts will only get 15 GB , which runs out quickly. If you don’t want to start paying for a Google One subscription to have more space available, you better learn to optimize what you save.

In this other article we gave you tips to clean your email account a little faster and easier, which together with Google Photos are the platforms that consume the most space. You can no longer accumulate useless emails like crazy, but neither can documents. Luckily, they are easy to delete.

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How to clean Google Drive? : How to free up space in Google Drive to be able to use it in Photos and Gmail

Both in Gmail and in Drive and Google Photos we have a reminder of the space consumed up to that moment, so that we do not forget to delete files and emails regularly. Precisely, within Google Drive in the browser, that is where we should go. 

In the left side menu, we will see at the end a section called Storage , with a line that indicates how much space we have left. Click on it to see a list of the largest files that we keep in the account and for which we should start deleting.

By marking a file, we can delete it by clicking on the trash can symbol that will appear in the top line on the right. It is also possible to use the right mouse button and click Remove at the end of the list of functions.

All the files that we delete will end up in the Trash, but you haven’t completely deleted them. Remember to use the Show file location function to see if, in addition to that document, you can delete similar ones in that folder that you no longer need and that at least doesn’t show Drive at the beginning of the Storage list.

Now that you’ve erased everything possible, it’s time to clean the trash. You will see that you still have the same available space as at the beginning, Google does not delete the documents from the trash until 30 days later in case you regret it and want to recover some. 

However, if you need free space at this time, you can force clean. Go to Trash (above Storage) and select the file that you are sure you do not need and carry out the same process: trash icon above or right click and Delete permanently . 

If you want to go faster, you can press the Empty Trash button . Thus, in a few minutes you will have cleaned a large amount of space and tidied up your Google Drive account that accumulated many files that you did not even remember. This will give you space to store more documents, emails or Photos.