I was one click away from paying for Google Photos, then I found this hidden setting

My storage bar had been sitting in the red for months, slowing approaching full, and every notification about it made me want to permanently disable the app.

I was one click away from a Google One upgrade before I bothered to check whether the settings could help me out.

Part of the reason I'd hesitated was that all the fixes sounded like something I'd regret. Letting Google delete almost 150GB of backed-up photos and videos is terrifying, but a colleague apparently had a better time of it than I expected.

These settings could dig me out. The last one I found gave me back more space than the other four combined, and I only heard about it because someone mentioned it in passing.

Switch backup quality to Storage saver

Compression isn't the enemy here

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When I set up Google Photos years ago, it asked whether I wanted originals backed up at full quality. I had an empty cloud folder and a trial with more space than I thought I'd ever use, so I picked Original quality without thinking about it.

Over the years, as phone cameras have become better and my reference folder has multiplied, it's clear that the choice aged rather badly.

Storage Saver caps photos at 16MP and videos at 1080p, and it works on most compatible media files. Some shots, like Portrait mode JPGs, can't be compressed at all.

So, I switched to Storage Saver from Original Quality. For work and hobby shoots, I'd already been recording at higher quality anyway, and I back up those elsewhere.

This setting only affects new uploads, and this caveat is not immediately obvious at setup. It slows the bleeding, but doesn't touch the years of high-quality photos already sitting in your account.

Turn off backup for folders you don't need

Stop backing up your cringe memes

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Google Photos has let you pick individual local folders since 2014, but I've never once opened that list.

At some point, I'd enabled backup for all device folders, including auto-syncing any new folder that appeared. As a result, every folder in my gallery was going to the cloud regardless of what was in it.

That includes hundreds of memes and reaction videos I'd forgotten about years ago, as well as every screenshot I'd ever taken, plus all the duplicates copied into various folders and forgotten.

I toggled off the offenders and deleted what was already uploaded, but that barely made a dent in the storage usage number.

Empty the trash

Deleting isn't deleting with Google Photos

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Google Photos holds deleted items for 60 days before permanently removing them, and they count against your quota the entire time.

That's a reasonable safety net most of the time. But it's frustrating when you're desperately deleting things to get under a limit, and the bar refuses to move.

I could delete 10GB of video, and they'd still count towards my total in a month. Trash folders are useful enough that even Google Messages is getting one, but they're the first thing you forget when you're panicking.

Clearing it out finally made the deleted items actually leave the storage, and that took the red down a notch.

Run the Manage storage tool

It finds the stuff you'd never scroll back to

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Under Photos settings > Backup > Manage storage, Google lists categories you can clean up, such as blurry photos, screenshots, large photos and videos, plus large Gmail attachments and files sitting in your Drive trash.

It's not clever, but it's accurate. A lot of what it showed me needed to go, and I wouldn't have been able to find them by scrolling.

I made my picks and moved a few percentage points further from the line. At this point, I figured I'd exhausted the options and prepared my wallet for a Google One upgrade.

Quiz 8 Questions · Test Your Knowledge Google Photos app

Trivia challenge From smart albums to AI magic — how well do you really know Google's beloved photo platform? Features History Storage AI Tools Sharing Begin 01 / 8 History In what year was Google Photos launched as a standalone app, separate from Google+? A 2013 B 2014 C 2015 D 2016 Correct! Google Photos launched on May 28, 2015, at Google I/O. It was spun out from Google+ as its own dedicated service, arriving with unlimited free storage as a major headline feature. Not quite — Google Photos launched in 2015 at Google I/O. Before that, photo management was bundled inside the ill-fated Google+ social network, which made it harder to discover and use. Continue 02 / 8 Storage Google Photos ended its free unlimited original-quality storage policy in June 2021. What storage cap applies to free Google accounts? A 5 GB B 10 GB C 15 GB D 20 GB That's right! Free Google accounts share 15 GB of storage across Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. Once you hit that limit, you need to purchase a Google One plan to keep uploading. The correct answer is 15 GB. Google's free storage tier covers 15 GB shared across all Google services including Drive and Gmail. After June 2021, new photo uploads count toward that shared pool. Continue 03 / 8 AI Tools What is the name of Google Photos' AI-powered feature that automatically groups photos by the people who appear in them? A Smart Tagging B Face Match C People Albums D Photo Groups Correct! People Albums uses on-device and cloud-based facial recognition to automatically cluster photos by individual faces. You can name each person, making it easy to find all photos of a specific friend or family member. The feature is called People Albums. Google Photos uses facial recognition technology to automatically sort photos by the individuals in them, letting you name and search for specific people across your entire library. Continue 04 / 8 Features Which Google Photos feature allows you to remove distracting objects or people from a photo using generative AI? A Magic Eraser B Smart Brush C Clean Shot D Object Wipe Spot on! Magic Eraser, introduced with the Pixel 6, lets you highlight and remove unwanted objects or photobombers from images. It uses generative AI to intelligently fill in the background, making removals look seamless. The correct answer is Magic Eraser. This AI-powered tool debuted on the Pixel 6 and was later made available to Google One subscribers. It intelligently fills in the area left behind when you remove an object, producing surprisingly clean results. Continue 05 / 8 Sharing What is the name of the Google Photos feature that automatically shares relevant photos with friends or family members it recognises in your pictures? A Smart Albums B Partner Sharing C Auto Share D Suggested Sharing Correct! Partner Sharing lets you automatically share photos that include a specific person with another Google account — perfect for couples or parents sharing memories with each other without any manual effort. The feature is called Partner Sharing. It allows Google Photos to automatically detect when a chosen person appears in your photos and share those images directly with a linked Google account, removing the need to manually send pictures. Continue 06 / 8 Features What does Google Photos' 'Memories' feature primarily do? A Backs up photos taken on this day in previous years B Resurfaces past photos and videos based on dates and events C Creates a daily slideshow of your most-liked images D Generates AI captions for old photos Right! Memories surfaces photos and videos from the past — including 'this day' anniversaries, trips, and auto-created highlights — displayed at the top of the app. It's designed to help you rediscover moments you might have forgotten. The answer is that Memories resurfaces past photos and videos based on dates and notable events. It goes beyond simple 'on this day' reminders by grouping themed collections like trips and celebrations, presenting them as mini highlight reels. Continue 07 / 8 AI Tools Which Google Photos editing tool uses AI to suggest brightness, contrast, and color adjustments tailored specifically to each photo? A Auto Enhance B Smart Edit C Photo Tune D Adaptive Filter Correct! Auto Enhance analyzes the content of each individual photo and applies AI-driven adjustments to lighting, color, and contrast. It's designed to make quick improvements without requiring any manual slider adjustments from the user. The answer is Auto Enhance. This one-tap AI tool assesses the specific characteristics of a photo — such as exposure and white balance — and applies tailored corrections automatically, saving users from having to manually tweak editing controls. Continue 08 / 8 Features Google Photos allows users to lock sensitive photos behind biometric authentication. What is this protected space called? A Private Vault B Locked Folder C Secure Album D Hidden Safe Exactly right! The Locked Folder is a password or biometric-protected space within Google Photos where you can store sensitive images. Photos placed there do not appear in the main library, are not backed up to the cloud, and won't show in other apps. The correct answer is Locked Folder. Introduced in 2021 starting on Pixel devices before rolling out more broadly, it keeps selected photos hidden behind device authentication. Importantly, content in the Locked Folder is stored only on-device and excluded from cloud backup. See My Score Challenge Complete Your Score / 8 Thanks for playing! Try Again

Convert existing photos to Storage saver

The retroactive fix for my original quality mistake

I was telling a friend how much progress I'd made when they asked whether I'd converted my existing library. I hadn't, because I didn't know you could.

I found it on the web client at photos.google.com, under Settings > Manage storage > Recover storage > Convert existing photos & videos to Storage saver. Android has been getting an in-app version of this, so check your app before booting up a computer.

When it finished running, I was under 50% usage, from a library that had been nearly full for the better part of a year.

Two things you should know before you click it. It's all or nothing, so you can't protect specific shots from compression while converting the rest, and it permanently rewrites the files in your account.

Anything you care about at full resolution needs to live somewhere else first.

The setting that should have been the default

Buying storage would have bought me maybe a year before the same notification came back, because the real issue wasn't a capacity problem.

Every folder I'd never audited, and every original quality file I didn't need would still have been there, just with more room to grow.

The truth is that I traded image resolution for space, permanently, on a library I can't get back. Someone who shoots photographs for a living would likely not do what I did, and someone paying $2 a month to skip the decision has a defensible position.

This works for me because almost nothing in my account needs to be full resolution, and the things that do are already backed up elsewhere.

If I upgrade later, at least I'll be paying for space I'm actually using, and I'd still like Google to add a proper duplicate removal tool like the one Samsung Gallery has so that I don't have to run a manual audit next time.