Your Android device is running out of internal storage space. What do yous do? Delete apps? That doesn't commonly gratuitous upward much space, unless you accept installed a multitude of apps. Articulate your various caches? That will by and large requite you a gig or 2 of space.

Most often, you'll turn to photos and videos–that is where the majority of space is gobbled up on mobile devices. But what happens when y'all delete 1 of those photos from your device? If y'all check your Google Bulldoze Photos section, you'll see the photograph has been removed from the cloud as well.

Fortunately, there is a way effectually that, and all information technology takes is one tap. This isn't a setting you tin arrange–it's a single button that will delete all photos from your device that are backed upwardly to Google Photos. If none of your photos are backed up to Google, then no photos will be deleted. In other words, you starting time demand to enable the backup.

Come across: End user data fill-in policy (Tech Pro Research)

Bankroll up to Google Photos

Before you lot endeavour to delete anything, enable Support & Sync from within Google Photos. Here's how.

  1. Open Google Photos on your Android device.
  2. Slide right from the left edge of the screen to reveal the sidebar.
  3. Tap Settings.
  4. Tap Support & Sync.
  5. Tap to enable Back Up & Sync (Figure A).

Exist patient–information technology may accept a while to complete the initial backup.

Figure A

Freeing upwards space

In one case the initial backup is complete, it'south time to free up space. This will delete all of the local copies of photos while retaining everything on your Google cloud account. To do this, follow these steps.

  1. Open Google Photos on your Android device.
  2. Slide correct from the left edge of the screen to reveal the sidebar.
  3. Tap Settings.
  4. Tap Free Upwardly Device Storage.
  5. When prompted, tap REMOVE (Effigy B).

Figure B

You have freed up space on your Android device without losing your photos and videos. If yous demand to view those photos and videos, open Google Photos, and you'll see them. If you need to get a local copy back, open the photo in Google Photos, tap the Menu button, and and then tap Download–photograph restored.

A full device is an unhappy device

Considering smartphones deal with solid-state storage, the less infinite they take, the slower the device will write to the file system. So make certain you have space on your device for the system to run every bit smoothly as possible–Android needs at least 200-500 MB free at a minimum, though I recommend 500 MB to 1 GB.

By clearing out locally-saved copies of photos, you can proceeds precious free space without losing your files.