Submitted by R961ROP t3_11zxtr2 in LifeProTips
I delete everything larger than 10m and also everything older than 6 years. If I need to save a document for the future then it’s already going to have been saved in my Dropbox. If an email is older than 6 years then I’m unlikely to ever need it again.
You can also create a filter to delete everything as it reaches 6 years old, but I do like to scan through the 6 year old emails just in case I do need to keep it.
Interesting. are there any prompt commands like this for photos? Specifically Is like to search by aspect ratio, orientation, date, or file size.
I also use a search operator “DO_NOT_DELETE” to make sure I don’t accidentally delete something important. A lot of the emails I end up deleting are just newsletters that I’ve subscribed to over the years.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3148245/32-tips-and-tricks-for-google-photos.amp.html <-Found this. It has some information relevant to your question.
Ugh, what a dreadful suggestion.
You're asking me to delete email from deceased loved ones, photos of family members and vacation trips, poetry from friends, legal notices about retirement accounts, the name of that great park I visited on vacation, my aunt's cherry chocolate cake recipe...
No. Just no. This is the worst LPT I've ever seen.
Maybe just archive those and save them somewhere else? Lol
There goes my bitcoin wallet..
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Just make a new gmail account lol
As someone who works in IT, I was literally rolling my eyes while thinking “What could possibly go wrong?”.
Oh gosh no don’t do that. I thought in the context of work.
If your running out of spaces it's prob because the account is linked to Google photos. Uninstall Google photos and you can still access all your images from the file - it's a pain but worth it to not have to pay/constantly delete stuff. *Android user.
I used "no reply" as it got all the circulars.
How do you then back up Google photos? Thanks
Sorry I back mine up on external sd as I go along so this didn't apply to me. But def do so before uninstalling.
Google played a reverse uno card here , but you can still use it like before while saving photo’s automatically and not count towards your quota.
You can keep doing it every few months whenever that 15gb limit is reached , just use 2FA and a strong password to prevent any untoward incident
The real LPT is in the comments
Don't pay Google for cloud storage by using this simple trick
However you'll have to pay Dropbox.
Looks like an ad.
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Is everyone suddenly running out of Google space though? All at the same time this week?
This is the first thing I'm looking at this morning, so maybe I'm missing it, But I don't see anything in there that helps to do the type of backdoor searches I'm looking for. This article spent 4 paragraphs explaining pinching and zooming.
I'm talking about advanced search operations on the photos filesystem of the type you used to be able to do when photos still resided within drive, not searching for photos of flowers.
Used to be unlimited innit
This is what I needed
Or upgrade to Google One starting at £15.99 a year for an extra 100GB of space:
https://one.google.com/about/plans?hl=en_GB
You're supposed to forward that to me. notatrick@youknowit.com
How is the "weight" distributed in partner sharing? It goes to the amount with most space? nevermind, you explained I just read it too fast
Thanks for the tip, although I can't imagine Google won't crack down on this too eventually, they really want me to get that 100gigs
Honestly, i used to do all the things to maximise storage, until it finally clicked that i'd GLADLY pay £1.50/month to never have to worry about that again! Ever since i did that, feel so much better lol.
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You can add an unread filter in your search. If you haven't read an email you received more than x months ago, odds are you don't care about it. Bonus: you can put a minus sign and a word to exclude things you might wanna keep. Example: -receipt -invoice -"cc company" -"student loan servicer name" etc...
Why don't you let me sort through what's important and what ain't
Or better yet use chat GPT
Apparently i have a huge library, i am procrastinating on doing this to my accounr, have done it for wife's phone as it was 100% and she was asking me to buy a new phone as storage is out , i am on ONE plan with 100GB, which is filling fast due to mainly photos ..
I was die hard fan and android fanboy just for this unlimited photos backup as i take lot of pics and it was a perk to never worry about getting storage filled due to unlimited backups
Does this also work with pictures?
Same happen to me aroudn 2 weeks ago.
It seems they changed the policies. i mean the one about dont be evil :)
I did this and directly advise against it, you may very well need documents from the past for whatever reason more often than you think. Genuinely regret this. It really doesn't free up that much more space anyways
Who tf is running out of space? I’ve had my gmail since 2004, and I haven’t had an issue?
Since you have so many things that are very important maybe you should back them up in multiple places? Like Google drive and other cloud services. I think it's a great LPT.
In your instance maybe you only need to go back 3 years... If your oldest things are at 6 and 7 years ago They won't come up in the search. But still back them up in other places because you never know.... Shit even print some of them out old school
Why doesn't Google tell us this stuff themselves????
I just bit the bullet and got myself a nas and an app that syncs (read upload) my photos to my nas whenever i am home, and then another app that auto-delete unsaved photos from my phone if they're older than a certain time.
I could set up port forwarding or whatever to access it online, but I don't want to open that can of worms, and I'm unlikely to view random pictures.
LPT: pay $19/year for Google One and save every email you’ve ever gotten including those from old friends, dead relatives, important banking/mortgage/credit card/statements, attachments including pictures of kids, college trips, and more.
No brainer.
15Gb limit on free Gmail account before paying 20€ to upgrade a year to 100Gb
You likely don't have many photos in your emails
Is there an equivalent for outlook I constantly run out of space in my work email inbox
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Good luck using Outlook’s search…
What app do you use? I'm partial to the /YYYY/MM/*.jpg directory structure, and looking for a potential alternative to the barely-maintained Sweet Home WiFi Picture backup.
I mean god forbid that you fork out a whopping $2/month for 200 GB of storage. Better cut back on that avacado toast.
I did but I swear it’s like a dollar a month for a lot more space so it’s worth it to me.
Haha yeah I don’t get this one, if you’re using google to sort files, photos, emails and ESPECIALLY using filters I feel like you might have time / money to spare a $1 ish a month for the extra storage.
I saw someone calling it evil business practice but I mean free cloud storage and everything else is so incredibly useful the $1 isn’t bad for more storage.
Please don't use that glorified chatbot.
It truly was, we just didn't know about it. I am bitter with how they go about it though. Settings seem to jump back to full res every so often without warning, I can't seem to be allowed clearing a pic from the account yet keep it on my phone. I'm scared to hell to lose something forever if I batch delete anything and I feel like they know they put people in this situation. OTOH the one plan is reasonably priced and it makes sense to have to pay for something like this. I just really don't like being pushed around lol
When you said you repeat the operation every few months, do you mean a new account every few months? Isn't there a limit on # of accounts linked this way? I seem to remember 4, but maybe that's in drive.
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I just deleted all my crucial files!
Lol I haven't gotten a new email which usually is in kb in weeks because I got tons of HD video uploaded. It's pretty a pretty shitty move to tie email storage to general cloud storage.
I am on first iteration for now, i got it from some YT channel who has been doing it since inception of that restriction.
How the fuck do you run out of Gmail space? I haven't deleted a single email in 15 years, and I'm nowhere near capacity.
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I miss when google photos was unlimited and actually a good app
Both return 0 results, which should be impossible, I've stuff that's a lot older and bigger on there.
It also counts your shared storage with Google Drive and photos. A couple of high resolution photos or a bunch of presentations/docs and you're full quick.
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Amazon photos gives you unlimited storage if you have a prime account, so I've been using that
Can you show me where the 200 GB storage plan costs $2/month and not $29.99/month please?
My Google photos backup uses the same space.
You don't have 15GB of photos/videos from the past 20 years?
Google hates this trick: make a second gmail account and auto-forward your significant mail there (skip newsletters, broadcasts, etc). And delete mail with unneeded attachments, which is where I use most of my disk space. (“Sis, did you really need to send me FIVE vids of my nephew doing the Hokey Pokey?”). When all mail is completely forwarded, delete the original mail at will. When the new acct is full, create another account.
You can do this forever. Each account gets it’s own quota. You’ll have to recall which acct has which mail so name the accounts with the year you created it, ex, Harvey.Cohen.2021
Haven't tried many, managed to get syncthing up and running, but i'm unhappy with some of the limitations, so I'm also looking for an alternative. It does what i need it to do (get stuff on my NAS), i just set up some batch script that does the sorting to proper directories afterwards.
Like a NAS is for sure more expensive than some google cloud storage, but having my own local network storage is just so versatile.
Look at the Google One site. 200 gb is only 2.99 per month. 24.99 per month would get you 5 TB.
Its far from that.
Not in Gmail but in my Hotmail I have historic emails from as far back as 1998 so No I will not be purging emails based on age thank you
it's 30 a year, not month. or 3 a month if you pay monthly.
If your definition of intelligence is regurgitating words because it saw them used with other words then yes.
Remove the speech marks
Older_than:6y
https://one.google.com/about/plans
If you pay annually, 200GB comes out to $0.75/mo
It keeps adding them when I click search and still 0 results... weird.
I can however search by last edit : before:2023-03-01
It always is
Might this only work with emails and not Drive files?
Google really spoiled us by enabling searching photos by keyword , that is irreplaceable for me , can't live without that, not sure if any offline software will achieve that ...
One of them said using a certain prompt showed all the available commands you could use. I’m sorry if it’s not what you were looking for.
Funny thing, i did that to another person who asked me, and gmail is absolutely broken, it wasnt able to delete all old emails.
Yes, just emails
The name of the app, give us the name
Pls tell me what do you do? LOL you are regurgitating words, phrases, ideas, and concepts you have absorbed and trained your mind on since you were capable of, with some minimal change from individual capabilities.
Most people most of the time, including me and you, will never create anything beyond that dataset.
You really overestimate the human mind nature. Especially for people below 120IQ lol
You ever been to school?
I wish that I had kept my old messages. I had a hotmail that I used in high school and when gmail launched I thought to myself "I'll never need that old stuff" and I let it expire.
I would love to go back and read the emails I was sending in high school.
That said - if there was a filter to mass delete everything in the "promotions" folder - I'd jump on that.
That explains it, thanks!
Google is shady though because I have mass deleted as well as deleting many large files from docs and photos and the memory bar thing has not changed AT ALL. And I've heard the same thing from others. They just want you to buy more storage.
A robot that can regurgitate words and write fully functional code (75-95% of the time) is not called "just" a chatbot.
It can also write essays, sometimes better then actual humans, tell you how to troubleshoot electronics or fix them yourself sometimes, and tell very convincing stories.
All of which are strikingly human qualities.
Plus the fact that it's not a chat bot in the way where it works in threads and can be instantly erased basically and reset back to start by starting a new thread.
Thank You! What a perfect timing considering I spent half of today emptying my drive.
It's only like a dollar a month for more storage than most people would ever need
I did; Syncthing.
You need it on your nas and on your phone, you need to specify the folder you want to sync, and it's target on the NAS, alongside setting up the usual stuff when dealing with home network storage. Whenever you are connected to your home network, it will sync those folders to your NAS.
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My Google Drive is my cloud backup for my archive, so that would sort of defeat that purpose.
I have a Workspace account through my former school, so I'm waiting to see what's going to happen with that. Sort of thinking about using a family member for an off-site backup, it won't be real time but most of the stuff doesn't change that much other than photo projects. My array currently is a little under 8TB, so Google One isn't going to be the answer.
And all those pictures of your kids Grandma emailed you.
But you kept all the marketing emails about "Spring Sale 2017!"
(damn it, my brain did the "6 years ago" quick math and came up with 2014. 2017 wasn't 6 years ago, was it?)
It’s the COVID lag, we are still in 2020
It's a damned good coder though!
>https://one.google.com/about/plans
I cannot believe I needed, what is so very clearly stated, pointed out to me. Thank you!
Yeah, and searching by faces is super convenient. I wanted to find a picture of me and my friend from a couples years ago - I searched for photos containing both of our faces and nobody else and found it in a few seconds.
Oh 🤪 I thought you just misspelt "syncing"
We also have extra storage that your wife pays for because I ran out in June lol
Are talking about shift-? to get a list of navigation hot key commands? That's definitely not what I'm looking for, but I appreciate the help. Have a nice day!
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You have a nice day as well.
And the last message my father ever sent me.
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I've been using my Gmail account for over 20 years. There's no other cloud storage I've been using that long.
And yes, I know, putting all my eggs in one basket is risky. But wholesale deletion is certainly not the answer.
Thank u my savior
Fuck off Google, you promised me I would never have to delete an email again.
Completely agree.
Google said that I was running low on storage, so I deleted all old mail. It worked for a solid 3 weeks, then I reached 100%
Google said it was because of Google photos, so I deleted over 15.000 of them, and it didn't go down. AT ALL.
I have literally no idea on what to do lol
I just said fuck it and use my Google Opinion Rewards to pay the monthly; finally have a use for the drip-fed $0.XX they pay you.
You'll pry that oil change receipt from 2009 out of my cold dead hands.
You could also download all your emails with the tool Google has before you delete them from Gmail. That way, if you really need something you have a copy. It's just not hosted by then anymore
That's a great idea, I was unaware!
Sometimes there's a delay in that bar changing. But I agree it seems like it should change more than it does.
It's been months, it should have changed by now. Seems purposeful on their end.
The real LPT should probably be to ease off our reliance on Google, whether that be by getting another email account, paid cloud storage, etc.
this is the best thing that happened to me this week. thank you.
Didn't know that was an option.. off to it I go
Neither did I until I was nearing the limit on storage and desperately looking for cheap/free options of getting around it outside of attempting to delete 1,000's of e-mails by hand.
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Unlimited for photos, but I still ran out of video space very quickly on Amazon photos.
Meanwhile, Google Photos is also unlimited for photos if you have a Google Pixel phone, which I do, but they require you to save them at slightly lower quality for that.
Amazon allows full quality, but if I don't stay a Prime member forever...
Everything now is moving towards "it's only a few bucks a month". It adds up to alotta bucks
Fair enough. I don't end up doing very many videos, but do end up with a lot of pictures, so I guess I've been lucky in that regard so far. I honestly hadn't realized there was a limit on the videos.
And yeah, the requirement of a prime membership is a thing. I do end up using it, so it's worth it most of the time, but there are definitely times it seems more trouble than it's worth
How to lose an important email in a few minutes
For now, I'm a Prime member as well, and I use it, so I might as well take advantage of the photos. Not sure if I'll always keep it, but it's "free" in the sense of no additional cost, if you're already doing that. They have a 5GB limit for videos, which we ran out of very quickly, but no limit for photos.
Meanwhile, if you have a Pixel phone, which my wife and I both do, Google provides infinite storage for photos, as long as you back them up in "high quality" instead of "original quality". The quality is generally good enough for my purposes, so I effectively have unlimited photo storage on both Google Photos and Amazon Photos.
Google's unlimited photos (for Pixel users) also doesn't cover videos. We take way more photos than videos, but one individual video can end up occupying a lot of space, so we've hit our limit and had to go back and delete stuff several times. Given that the limiting factor on our Google storage is the videos, and Amazon's storage has even smaller limits for the videos than Google does, Amazon's service doesn't help much with my storage limits on Google. It's nice that I get unlimited quality on Amazon, but it doesn't help with the quantity limits in any meaningful way.
Definitely some of that stuff is specific to me, though, so if it helps much more for you, more power to ya!
Just did it and recovered about 10 MB of the 22 GB I'm using. Thanks, OP!
Dropbox is free, though limited storage on the free plan. OP isn't necessarily recommending Dropbox in place of Google, but they're using Dropbox only for documents and such, which don't generally take up a lot of space. Their usage of Dropbox means they don't have to worry as much about losing important documents this way. I don't think it's an ad.
I totally agree, though, that it's just not a very useful tip. There's too much potential to cause problems larger than the one you solve.
Drive is also free for 15GB.
It's a dollar lol. Just buy a dollar less in gas and pretend it never existed
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Same here I still tend to think of any year in the 2000s as being a certain number of years from 2020
Now, they plugged the maps into the global google url, so they can track your position directly in the same account even if you did not want to.
U know, dont be evil.
I mean the change from maps.google.com to google.com/maps
it seems trivial, but it's not.
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