In other words, your phone storage is begging for mercy. You snap a thousand photos of your doggies or save the memes which you are not going to look at. After a while, this familiar "Storage Full" pop-up appears. This is your junk drawer of the digital world.
First thing which comes to mind after it is spending more money. Apple, Google, and Microsoft hope that you are going to do exactly that and pay monthly fees for extra gigabytes. Why would you pay for renting digital storage space if you can live there for free?
You can control your digital world absolutely for free. And how? Think about it as about playing the Tetris. You have to rotate and fit your files in the right places. It requires some skills but it can save you a lot of money.
Firstly, let us talk about the landscape. The rivals in this field are Google Drive, iCloud, OneDrive, and Dropbox. All of them offer some free gigabytes of space ranging from 5GB to 15GB. Though it seems enough for you, the video eats gigabytes incredibly fast.
Google Drive offers 15GB of free space. However, there is one drawback which almost every user faces. The Drive is linked with Gmail and Google Photos. So, with thousands of unread emails which stuff your inbox, you will be out of free space soon.
The solution to this problem is brutal clean of your email box. Go to Gmail and type "has:attachment larger:10M" in the search line. It shows all attachments which eat your gigabytes. Start deleting your old homework assignments and giant videos with your two-year-old. Believe me, the feeling of pressing the delete button is amazing.
Now, let us talk about the photos. Once upon a time, Google Photos offered unlimited space for "High Quality" pictures. Sadly, this time is over. Every photo counts for your quota now.
You have to control your backups manually. You should not allow the application to back up everything automatically. Download the photos via USB and upload to the cloud only the best of them. All the other photos should remain on the hard drive of your computer.
Apple users face even less options. The iCloud offers only 5GB of free space. It is barely enough for contacts and documents. If you use iPhone, you have no chances.
If you want to survive with 5GB, you have to disable iCloud Photos. This feature uses the most of your space. Use the "Optimize iPhone Storage" option if you are sure that you need the iCloud Photos. It will save only thumbnails on your phone and store the whole picture in the cloud.
However, it is better to use some third-party application for storing pictures. Install Google Photos or Amazon Photos (for Prime users) for storing pictures and use the iCloud for backups and documents. It is extremely important to separate these services in order to survive with limited space.
Another great option for you is the Microsoft OneDrive. It gives 5GB for free. The integration with Windows and Office applications makes it the best choice if you use Word or PowerPoint. You will be able to save your papers right there in order not to lose them after the laptop crash.
One of the true pro tricks is called "Multi-Cloud Strategy". You have to distribute the storage of the documents in different clouds rather than putting them all in one cloud. Use Google Drive for your school assignments and shared folders, OneDrive for your personal writing or gaming screenshots.
This trick can be compared to different drawers for different socks. It prevents one service from stuffing the free gigabytes. Maybe, you will use Dropbox for exchanging the files with your friends because of the great linking options. Dropbox gives only 2GB for free but it has extremely reliable software.
Besides, you have to pay attention to the file types. Your modern smartphone is able to record the video in 4K format and it can take more than 400MB per minute. And you definitely do not need to upload such enormous files to the cloud.
Before uploading videos to the cloud, you have to compress them. There are applications which can reduce the file size twice without affecting the quality of the video. The HEIC and WebP formats of the photos are much smaller than the standard JPEG.
And last but not least, there is "The Graveyard". Everybody has a folder named "Old Stuff" or "Misc". It includes all unnecessary and duplicate files. Schedule the purge once a month. Put it on your calendar to remember about that. Allocate fifteen minutes of your time every first day of the month in order to delete the garbage.
Also, there is an option of physical backup. Using the external hard drive or big USB stick you will be able to create the backup once and use it forever. You will be able to buy 1TB drive for the cost of one year subscription of the cloud storage. It is not "in the cloud", but it is much more secure way to store the archive.
The point is that the cloud companies try to make you pay for your procrastination. They want to make the payment for extra gigabytes as easy as possible for you. You make a statement by controlling your files in order to keep free space in the cloud.
You can feel yourself relieved after seeing the "Storage Available" bar green. It means that you are in control of your digital world. You are not paying any monthly fee for your own memories.
So, before you pay some money for extra gigabytes, check what you are storing. Do you really need to keep all your selfies taken in 2019? Probably not. Selectively choose and you will be saving money for pizza.
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