How to free up space in your Google Drive, especially if you are a active photo contributor on Maps. When you upload a lot of high resolution photos/videos to some of Google’s services, including Google Maps, Google Photos, Google+, Blogger, Hangouts, Panoramio, Picasa Web Albums, YouTube Web Channel Art, you may find that your free space in your Google drive gets eaten up by Photos/video.
*This does not affect files directly uploaded to Google Drive
To free up this space by converting the files to Google’s High Quality setting (photos max to 16MP, and videos max to 1080p), which is not reversible, follow the steps below. Which gives unlimited storage for photos and videos at High Quality within Google Services above.
Recover photo/video storage by going to Google Photos web interface at, and click Recover Storage (this is non-reversible for the existing storage of photos and videos) https://photos.google.com/settings
This will take some time in the back end, you can switch off the computer without affecting the process, and your photos/videos will be resized to (photos max to 16MP, and videos max to 1080p) and have unlimited storage for these files. May take a few hours to a few days depending on how much storage needs to be processed. (this is non-reversible for the existing storage of photos and videos)
Because this process is a one-off, you may need to repeat this process occasionally.
@StephenAbraham careful though, if you do this, I believe it also down-sizes other full-resolution personal photos that you have in Google Photos. If you don’t mind this, or if all those 8gb are gmaps submissions, then no problem.
Personally I have two tricks that I use to manage my ever-growing gmaps photos:
I backup to Google Photos on a separate account - this is for my personal photos. That is at full/original resolution. My gmaps account is set at High Resolution so image storage is free.
If I have time, I take the submission photos directly from the gmaps android interface, that way it does not save or backup an alternate.
I have already strongly feedback to the team that storage space management is a huge issue. Unfortunately i doubt it is much of a priority on Google side because 1. free storage is not coming back, 2. it’s too complicated, 3. only small number of super high users are affected.
note to others too that if you delete the photo from your google photos, it will get removed from your maps submissions. This is another very tricky bit that users shouldn’t have had to worry about.
@JulienH , yes, understood your comments, and very valid too. All my original photos are 16MP or lower. My phone is 12 MP. My mirrorless is 16MP. Although I know, additional compression is done on my original even if they are under 16MP. So far, I don’t mind, I don’t notice much quality drop as far as my eye can see for myself.
Regarding the delete photos from Photos resulting in removal in maps, I sort of have a different experience/workflow to it, so it doesn’t affect me that much. If you want to check out, it’s in the link below.
I am glad to see both of you also doing research on this. But we should never have to do this in the first place, as an end-user, I am contributing to Google Maps and I treat it as a contribution to Yelp / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter and the photo I submitted should always be “free” storage. This should be clear no matter how the photo is contributed.
Especially with the addition of videos, 360 photos, more storage space might be accidentally used.
I really appreciate that Google is trying to retain our personal copyright and allow us to remove our photos, but maybe there can be a clearer or more effective way of doing that while keeping the same objective and ease of use.
For example if I am explaining to a new local guide how to submit photos, ideally I want to say just go ahead and submit without worry.
My take on this issue is to draw a line just before the photo us added to Maps.
Is that photo not using any Drive Space at that moment? If NO, and after added to Maps still give a NO, then I accept everything is alright there.
Think about that.
Now the problem begin with, a photo already using Drive Space (means it already backed up to Photo using Original Quality). When we select from Photos and add to Maps, Maps will “point” to that photo. That is also why when we delete that photo, Maps will got affected.
That is why I will always avoid adding pictures to Maps directly from Photos.
Yes @RonneBD , according to number of photos uploaded, Google must provide additional space to maintain the quality of photos. To maintain quality, uploading photos directly from phone is not that too simple depending upon the speed of internet and data package one is having. Any how, best wishes to you all fellow LGs Friends.
The line here is where is the picture when it is added to Maps. If the picture is in our local device folder, then it has no chance to use our Google Photos space - thus ZERO drive space quota.
(I need to avoid simply say Google Photos App or Photo Gallery Apps, as normally both of them allow us to access pictures in local device folder and pictures already uploaded to Google Photos.)
I’m one of the people who’ve gone over my quota - the tough part is I’m not very far over the $19.99 100GB so paying for the 1 TB $99.99 a year is overkill.
I’ve got 86.45 GB on Photos, but I can’t see a way to filter through the images/videos to see if I can remove some of the larger ones and hopefully pull my total down to under 100GB. Any suggestions? I don’t want to lose the quality of all my personal photos, but I have to imagine I have some large videos I can remove and back-up elsewhere.
It’d be great if Google Photos put a meta tag (or something) on photos that are uploaded to Maps, and in turn those didn’t use any space. It feels counterintuitive to have our Maps photos, that benefit Maps, force us to purchase space.
My advice is to stop spending your valuable time giving free stuff to a multi billion dollar corporation in exchange for meaningless and useless badges
Google are using a “social awareness/justice” trait to gather valuable content free of charge from us (rather gullible) contributors for their own (very profitable) gain
If it was “fun” taking part and spending all that time submitting content then I’m going to get twice the “fun” and spend just as much time removing the content, just a shame that I cannot do it with the single click of a button
@TerryB_1 … i use Google Maps almost daily for all my needs. Especially when travelling. A company by itself cannot create the data that is in Google Maps. Which is free for use. I contribute occasionally, accurately, in the hope that many others will do the same. So, so make Maps something truly usable by the rest of us. Even by people who don’t contribute anything.
If’s ok if you feel that way, because this is a volunteer program, and no one is really forced to contribute, even if he or she uses the product free of charge. But I would ask you to not delete what you have contributed because it helps the rest of us. You could just leave the contributions there, as long as it’s accurate and helpful for others.
“Which is free for use”
Well, no it isn’t really, Google make a lot of money on the commercial use of the maps and contribution that we provide free of charge, you seriously don’t believe that Google provides the map service free from the goodness of their hearts do you ?
