How your Google storage works (2024)

FAQs

How does a Google storage plan work? ›

Every Google Account comes with 15 GB of cloud storage at no charge, which is shared across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. When you upgrade to a paid Google One monthly subscription, your total storage increases to 100 GB or more, depending on the plan you choose.

Most files in your My Drive take up space as they contain files and folders you upload or sync, such as . pdf files, images, or videos. Your space in My Drive also contains files you create, such as Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms. Items in your Trash also take up space.

To see the breakdown of usage in your Google account, go to https://drive.google.com/settings/storage . To see all the files in your Google MyDrive sorted by usage, go to https://drive.google.com/drive/quota .

Files in Google Drive, which includes PDFs, images, and videos. Meet call recordings. Files created or edited in collaborative content creation apps like Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, Recorder, Vids, and Jamboard. Files created or edited after June 1, 2021 count against your quota.

If your storage plan is canceled or expires

If you cancel your storage plan, you'll lose all additional storage for your account. At the end of your billing cycle, you may be over quota. If you're over your storage quota for 2 years, all the content that counts toward your storage quota may be deleted.

If you look at it as solely a cloud storage purchase, then it's likely worth that monthly cost. However, if you don't think you'll use that 100 GB to the point of getting good use out of it, you have to look at the Google One benefits alone.

With the Google One Storage Management Tool, you can review and free up storage space by deleting emails in your trash, spam emails, or emails with large attachments. info Features are subject to availability. The steps may look different depending on your device.

The reason for this is simpler than you might think: “deleted” files are actually just moved to Trash, where they continue to take up storage space. Google does it this way because it's a security measure that prevents users from accidentally deleting important files.

If you want to keep the majority of your items in Google Drive and Gmail, you can free up space by sorting each service by file size and deleting only one or two large files instead of a few dozen smaller items.

How do I use Google storage efficiently? ›

Manage storage through Google One

Under "Get your space back," click Free up account storage. Under "Clean up suggested items" or "Clean up by service," click a category or service you want to review. Select the files to delete. Based on the file type, you might be able to change how you sort and filter your results.

If you run out of storage space, this may happen in Google Drive: You can't sync or upload new files. You can't create new files in Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms, and Jamboard. Neither you nor anyone else can edit or copy your affected files.

Messages and attachments, like items in your Spam and Trash folders, take up space.

Similarly, extensive use of Google Docs/Sheets/Slides and other apps can create enough documents to fill up your storage quota and result in you running out of space. Gmail accounts with large numbers of attachments saved in the archive will also run into this issue.

When you set up billing for your subscription, you enter a primary payment method that we charge automatically for your ongoing service. Later, you can change your primary payment method, or add other methods—for example, as a backup for automatic payments or to split payments between methods.

Google in its blog post informs that every account will be automatically upgraded from their existing 15 GB of storage to 1 TB as the company rolls this out. Eligibility: Every Google Workspace Individual account will get free 1TB cloud storage. Users don't have to do anything. The upgrade will happen automatically.

If you cancel your Google One plan or it expires, the files will remain in your account for a limited time and then Google may delete them. Your storage quota would return to the standard 15GB of free storage. If you exceed the 15GB storage, your Gmail, Docs Editors apps, and Photos will no longer work.

At any time, you can change your storage plan to either a monthly or annual fee. A Google One subscription doesn't expire -- it'll renew automatically unless you change your settings. When you switch to a different payment schedule, it can take up to 24 hours for these changes to take effect.