Help Android Storage Full - Google photos taking up 7.37GB

[galaxynotace]

Device - Moto G 4

I am constantly getting notifications that my storage space is full. I use google photos for my photos, videos etc. I regularly use the "free up storage" on google photos, which I was under the impression deletes the original image/ video from the device, and stores a copy of it on google photos.

However, in my device storage, google photos is taking up 7.37GB of my device storage. Why is this? Surely the whole point of it is to take up no device storage and store everything on the cloud.

If I go to settings > internal storage > apps > google photos > I get the options to "clear data" and "clear cache". If I clear these, will it delete the photos/videos I have on the google photos' cloud? As I dont want anything to be deleted off google photos - I just want to delete this 7.37GB off my device.

...and as an extra bit of info, I also have 64GB SD card in the device which has 30GB free space. Drives me crazy how android STILL doesnt allow the SD card to be used for all apps! Because the on board storage is full, I can't even install new apps, despite having 30GB of storage free.

 

[lunatic59]

If you clear the data and cache for Photos, it won't delete any of the cloud-saved images. As a matter of fact, it won't delete any of the pictures on your phone, either. What it will do is clear thumbnails and low-res images of your cloud and local images. Of course, as soon as you open photos and browse your images, the thumbnails will be rebuilt and the cache will begin to fill up again.

Drives me crazy how android STILL doesnt allow the SD card to be used for all apps!

Actually it does, but you have to make that decision when you first insert it. It's called adoptable storage where Android will see the SD card as an extension of the intern storage. Be advised, though that there are downsides to doing this. For example once you do this, you should never remove your SD card unless you are going to reformat it as it will be encrypted and inexorably linked to your phone. Also, some manufacturers turn OFF the adoptable option as they think it causes more problems than it solves. I can't say for the G4 but LG never let you do this.

 

[galaxynotace]

Thanks. I'll try this. I can't see how 7GB is being taken up just by cache though. Surely thats too large.

With regards to the SD card, I did format it as internal. From my recollection there were two options, one was external, so it'd be used as a media card. I chose the other option which I think was format as internal. I dont recall seeing the word "adoptable" though, so Im guessing that would be a third option for other phones?

The option I selected allows me to move apps across to the SD card. However despite being able to put apps on the SD card, local storage still needs to have approx 1gb free otherwise it wont even let me install apps to the SD card.

 

[lunatic59]

7GB does seem a bit excessive. I just checked mine at the cache was about 500MB. I cleared it, browsed through photos and opened a few to full res and the cache only went up to about 23MB so i guess you have a lot of crap in there. BTW, you might want to reboot your phone while you're at it.

 

[galaxynotace]

As I still have a Moto G4 that I stopped using only in June .....

easy and regular assumption about the LG G4 @lunatic59

..... I just put my sim and SD Card back in it out of curiosity, as I honestly couldn't remember how it was. (I keep it updated on wifi).

You can select adoptable storage, I never did, but are you sure you have?

I probably can't solve this for you, but do you have the option in the camera app to save to either phone or storage?
Is your total storage your phone (16 GB?) plus the SD Card size?

As I understood it, if you switched to Adoptable storage (I wouldn't either!), you no longer "see" a seperate SD Card so you wouldn't select to move apps there.
If it's currently set as removable storage, you would always have the option with some apps to "move" apps there, but as anyone here will tell you, apps never entirely move across, only a portion; and often return with an update.

Here's some new screenshots if it helps:

View attachment 146498 View attachment 146499 View attachment 146500 View attachment 146504 View attachment 146498 View attachment 146499

Hi thanks for your response and the images, however I'm a bit confused by your response. The moto g 4 gives two options when you first insert an SD card. As described above, the two options are either to use as an SD media card, or format it as additional internal storage. No matter which option you select, the Moto G will still see the SD card as an SD card. It will never combine the two storages into one single storage. So my 16GB moto G + a 32 GB SD card does not combine its storage to become 48GB. it still reads it as 16GB + 32GB. Theres no way around this. I know this as I bought a few SD cards and tried formatting them a number of ways and the phone will always treat the SD card as a separate storage destination

 

[galaxynotace]

...but as an update; I have cleared the data on the google photos app and the storage taken has dropped from the 7GB to 102MB. So hopefully this stays down. Thanks for the help.

 

[lunatic59]

the Moto G will still see the SD card as an SD card.

Not quite. Every Android device has an /sdcard mount point (folder) which will look like an SD card location to the system. This doesn't mean there is an SD card. Actually, in any Android phone made in the last 6 years, if it has an SD card slot, it will NEVER mount at /sdcard. The explanation why is tl;dr.