As I sifted through the tens of thousands of photos I’ve taken during two-thirds of my life, there was a satisfying glow to the process-a nostalgia vortex. However, my obsession with organizing my digital life-including operating a strict WhatsApp Zero policy-means that I would be fully satisfied with the job only if I did it manually.
It’s also possible to free up some of your account’s space by shrinking the size of photos by dropping them to “storage saver quality.” Its storage management tools allow you to delete large photos and videos in bulk and get rid of screenshots and blurry photos. And pictures can be siphoned off into albums (it was too late for me). You can archive photos if you don’t want to delete them or keep them in your main photo library. Google has some tools to help you manage your photos. Before I started deleting everything, I’d used up around 80 GB of storage I’ve decreased this to about 60 GB. Plus, practically speaking, there’s now more space in my Google account. Now I plan on sorting the most recent photos once a year. In another 10 years, I may have taken an extra 20,000 to 40,000 photos. If I had waited another few years, the task would have been too daunting to even start. Once sorted, it has been easier to find specific events and the best photos from them. Ever-expanding cloud storage makes it possible to keep taking photos and adding to the pile. During the process-and thousands of "delete" taps-three things stood out: My photos collection unknowingly includes a lot of sensitive personal information (both about me and others) I don't need to keep so many photos and wrestling my collection into shape frees up a lot of space in my Google account.īut there are other reasons to spend some time clearing up your photos. In total, I erased 16,774 photos and videos. Now is the time to stop being an information hoarder, before it spirals out of control.įor the past six weeks, I’ve spent around a dozen hours deleting thousands of photos that had been uploaded to my Google Photos account in the last half-decade. Uploading thousands of photos and never taking any steps to sort or manage them creates a series of privacy risks and is making it impossible to maintain your photo collection in the future. The photos join a constantly updating stream of data about life.īut it shouldn’t be this way. You might pick the best photo and share it on WhatsApp or Instagram and then never think about the rest of them ever again. For many, the process is likely identical: You snap some photos with your phone and they’re automatically uploaded to Google’s cloud service. Every year, more than a billion people use the Google Photos app to upload and store billions of pictures and videos.
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