Gmail storage full? Free up space and keep every email
When Gmail says your storage is full, you have three choices: pay Google for more, delete things, or move your old email somewhere else first. This guide covers all three, and how to clear space without losing years of mail.
What happens when your storage is full
A personal Google account has up to 15 GB of storage, shared between Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos. Android WhatsApp backups count too. Once it is full, Google says:
- You cannot send or receive email in Gmail. Mail sent to you goes back to the sender.
- You cannot upload to Drive or back up to Photos.
- If you stay over your limit for two years, Google may delete your content in Gmail, Drive and Photos.
From Google's storage help pages, checked on 28 October 2026.
Find out what is using the space
Open Google One storage (one.google.com/storage) to see how much of your 15 GB each service uses. If Photos or Drive is the big one, start there: this guide is about the email part.
In Gmail, these searches find the largest and oldest mail:
larger:10Mfinds emails bigger than 10 MB, usually ones with large attachments.has:attachment older_than:2yfinds attachments more than two years old.older_than:5yfinds everything more than five years old.
Quick wins that lose nothing you need
- Empty Spam. It counts towards your storage.
- Empty Bin. Deleted mail stays in Bin for 30 days and still uses space until then.
- Unsubscribe and clear out newsletters. Search for
unsubscribe older_than:1yto find old bulk mail.
Google notes that the storage figure can take a day or two to update after you delete a lot.
The hard part: years of old email
For most people the real space goes on years of ordinary mail with attachments: invoices, contracts, photos from family, letters from the bank. It is the mail you rarely open but do not want to lose. Deleting it frees the space. Keeping it means paying for more storage, every month, for as long as you want it.
There is a third option: keep a complete copy on your own computer first, then delete the old mail from Gmail.
How to do that with Stow
Stow is a private email archive for Mac. It brings years of old email down from the cloud into an encrypted, searchable archive on your computer.
- Add your Gmail account. You sign in on Google's own page. Stow only reads your mail.
- Let it download everything. Every email and attachment, checked byte for byte as it is saved. A large mailbox can take a few days, because Gmail limits how much an app may download each day.
- Choose how much to keep in Gmail, for example the last 12 months.
- Follow Stow's steps to delete the older mail yourself. Stow shows the date up to which everything is safely archived and gives you the exact Gmail search to use. It tells you to turn off Conversation view first, because otherwise deleting an old conversation also deletes newer replies in it.
Your old mail stays on your Mac, encrypted, and searchable in seconds, including the text inside PDFs and Word attachments. The archive is usually less than half the size the same mail takes in Gmail.
After you delete from Gmail, your Mac holds the only copy. Keep your Mac backed up, for example with Time Machine, and keep Stow's recovery key somewhere safe. Stow reminds you of both before you delete anything.
Is paying for more storage better?
It can be. If you need old mail on your phone, or you share a Google One plan with your family anyway, more storage is simpler. If you mostly need old mail for searching now and then, at a desk, a local archive costs less over time and keeps your history off Google's servers.
Stow is €30 once, with a 14-day free trial, for Macs with Apple silicon.
Stow is coming soon. Join the waitlist and we will email you once, the day it launches.