Free up Google Drive Storage, Google Photos Removal

Created by Jacob Rohr, Modified on Wed, 26 Feb at 9:09 AM by Jacob Rohr

Wycliffe USA

v.20250225.JR

Purpose and Scope

The purpose of this document is to walk you through downloading and then removing your photos from your Google account using Google Takeout. Please note that Google Takeout does not directly delete your photos. It only downloads a copy of your photos to your computer. You must manually delete the photos from your Google account after downloading them.

This document assumes you are already logged in to the account that needs to be fixed on a computer.

Preparing Photos to Download from Google Account

CLICK HERE to navigate to the Google Takeout page.
- https://takeout.google.com
You will be greeted with the following landing page in the screenshot below.
Click on the Deselect all button in the “Select data to include” section.

Scroll down to, or use Control + F to search for, Google Photos. It should be about halfway down the webpage.
Check the box to the right of Google Photos
Click All Photo Albums Included to select which photos to include in this download.

Scroll to the bottom of the webpage and click Next Step
This next page is where you can create a new export. Make sure you have the following selections before moving forward.
- Destination: Send Download Link via email
- Frequency: Export Once
- File type & size: .zip; 2GB
Click Create Export.

After clicking Export, you will be told that an email will be sent when your file is ready to download.

NOTE: Once the files are ready, you have 7 days to download them.

Downloading Photos from Google Takeout

Once the email arrives telling you that your file export is ready, open the email and click the link to go to the download page for your files.

When you click the “Download your files” link, you will be taken to the “Manage your exports” page illustrated below.

To the right of Google Photos, the options will be either Download or Show Exports depending on how many files were created.

Click each Download button you see and tell the file where to download on your computer.

NOTE: Make sure your computer’s hard drive has enough storage free, or choose to download the files to an external hard drive.

Delete photos from Google Photos

The last step is to go back to Google Photos and delete all the photos from your account.

On the Google Photos webpage, click on the checkbox for the first photo or date at the top of your list
Scroll down the page a few times and then hold down the shift key. Use your mouse to hover over the last photo you want to delete and click on the checkbox. The chosen photos should be highlighted blue as you scroll, and a check box should be on them once you make the selection.

NOTE: Google limits selecting a maximum of 500 photos at one time.

Click the Trash Can in the upper right of the screen to delete the selected photos, and then Move to trash.

Repeat the process until all the photos are removed.
Once done, click the Trash Can in the left menu and then the Empty Trash icon to the upper right of the screen.

Once Google finishes deleting all that is in the trash can (which can take a while depending on the size of the deleted items), you should have that storage reclaimed in your account.