Streamlining Your Digital Life: A Guide to Clearing Out Your Google Drive and Gmail”

Google Drive and Gmail are two of the most widely used digital services offered by Google. In 2020, Google Drive had 2 billion active users, as reported by Axios, and Gmail had 1.5 billion active users in 2019, according to CNBC. Google provides users with a combined storage space of 15GB for all of its services, but as you accumulate more files and attachments, this space can quickly fill up. To avoid having to pay for additional storage, we have outlined several ways to free up space in your Google Drive and Gmail accounts, both on desktop and mobile devices.

Deleting Large Files

One of the easiest ways to free up space in your Google Drive and Gmail accounts is by deleting large files. This way, you only have to remove a few items, instead of sorting through a large number of smaller files.

Here are the steps to delete files based on size in Google Drive on your desktop:

1. Log into your Google Drive account.
2. Click “Storage” in the menu on the left side of the screen.
3. Sort your files by “Storage Used” on the right side of the screen.
4. Select the large files you wish to delete.
5. Delete the selected files by clicking the trash bin in the top right or by dragging them to the “Trash” on the left side of the screen.
6. Go to the “Trash” menu by clicking “Trash”.
7. Click “Empty Trash” in the top-right corner.
8. Click “Delete forever”.

The process of deleting large files in the Google Drive app is similar:

1. Open the Google Drive app and log into your account.
2. Tap “Files” in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
3. Tap “Name” under “My Drive” near the top of the screen.
4. Tap “Storage Used” to arrange your files by size.
5. Tap the three dots (…) next to the file you want to delete.
6. Tap “Remove”.
7. Go to the “Trash” by tapping the hamburger icon in the top-left corner of the screen, then tapping “Trash”.
8. Empty the trash by tapping the three dots (…) in the top-right corner, then tapping “Empty trash”.

To delete large files in Gmail on your desktop:

1. Log into your Gmail account.
2. Type “has:attachment larger:10MB” into the search bar and hit “Search”. This will show you all emails with attachments larger than 10 MB.
3. Select the emails you want to delete by checking the boxes next to them.
4. Click the trash bin icon in the top-right corner of the screen.
5. Go to the “Trash” by clicking “Trash” on the left side of the screen.
6. Empty the trash by clicking “Empty trash now”.

To delete large files in the Gmail app:

1. Open the Gmail app and log into your account.
2. Type “has:attachment larger:10MB” into the search bar and hit “Search”.
3. Tap the email you want to delete.
4. Tap the trash bin icon in the top-right corner of the screen.
5. Go to the “Trash” by tapping the hamburger icon in the top-left corner of the screen, then tapping “Trash”.
6. Empty the trash by tapping “Empty trash now”.