To check out a list of apps that occupy data, open the Google Drive Settings panel, and then click Manage Apps. However, you can’t readily see these files since they are ‘hidden’ from view. Various Android apps use Google Drive for backup purposes - WhatsApp being the most notorious of them all. Of course, you can choose to transfer ownership of a shared item to someone else with storage to spare, and eliminate it from counting toward your quota.Ĭheck our in-depth Google File Sharing Guide for more information. But contrary to popular belief, if you are the owner of the shared items, then they fully count toward your quota and doesn’t ‘split up’ among others. Google Drive allows you to easily share files and even entire folders with others. The High Quality on the other hand limits photos to 16MP and videos to 1080p resolution and that’s how promises unlimited storage to Pixel phone owners. And that counts toward your storage as if you were uploading them directly to Google Drive. The latter option uploads both images and videos in the original quality. It has two sync settings - High Quality and Original. Google Photos is one of the exciting offerings from Google, and is inextricably linked to Google Drive. If you receive emails with a lot of file attachments regularly, expect Google Drive to fill up pretty fast. And that also involves the messages in your spam or trash folders as well.

All Google services are tied to your Google Account, and that means your Gmail messages and attachments ultimately end up on Google Drive. If you use Gmail, don’t expect to receive a separate quota of storage just for your emails. Further, the files that you put into the trash also count, until they are purged automatically after 30 days. And that includes PDF files, Microsoft Office documents, images, videos, etc. Most File Formatsĭirectly uploading almost any file to Google Drive counts. However, there are also other instances that consume space which isn’t apparent. Similar to other cloud services, Google Drive uses up your storage quota for most uploads that you perform directly.

Google drive storage plan