Google Photos changed its storage policy in June 2021 – all photos and videos now count against your 15GB Google account storage, regardless of resolution. here’s how storage is counted, what takes up the most space, and how to get more without paying if possible.
How Google storage is allocated
Your free 15GB is shared across three Google services:
- Google Photos (all photos and videos)
- Google Drive (files, documents, backups)
- Gmail (emails and attachments)
The 15GB isn’t split – it’s a single pool. A large Gmail inbox full of attachment-heavy emails can eat into the storage available for photos.
What takes up the most space in Photos
Videos are by far the biggest storage consumers. A single minute of 4K video can be 300-400MB. If you’ve been backing up phone videos for years, that’s where most of your storage is going.
High-resolution photos from modern smartphones are 5-15MB each. At 15GB total you have room for roughly 1,000-3,000 photos from a modern phone before running out.
Finding what’s using your storage
Go to photos.google.com > click your profile icon > Manage storage, or go directly to one.google.com to see a breakdown of storage used by each service.
In Google Photos specifically, you can sort by file size to find the largest individual items: search for “video” or use the filters to show only videos, which are almost always the biggest files.
Freeing space without paying
Delete videos you don’t need: Videos are the fastest way to reclaim significant space. A few minutes of deleted video can recover gigabytes.
Delete duplicate photos: Google Photos has a “Manage storage” tool that identifies blurry photos, screenshots, and items already backed up from other sources.
Check Gmail: Large email attachments count toward your storage. In Gmail search for has:attachment larger:10MB to find large attachment emails you can delete.
Google Drive cleanup: Delete large files you no longer need, and empty the Trash (Drive trash doesn’t free space until emptied).
If you need more storage
Google One plans start at $2.99/month for 100GB. If you take a lot of photos or video, the 100GB tier is reasonably priced. The free 15GB is genuinely limiting for active smartphone photographers in 2026.