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What counts against your Google Drive quota
Your Google storage is one shared pool — 15 GB free, split across Drive, Gmail and Photos. But inside Drive, not everything uses that quota. Knowing what does (and what doesn't) tells you exactly where to look when you're full.
What DOES count
- Uploaded files — videos, photos, PDFs, ZIPs, audio, installers, and any file you dragged into Drive. These are the bulk of most people's usage.
- Files in your Trash — deleted files keep counting for 30 days until Trash is emptied or Google purges them. This surprises almost everyone.
- Previous versions — if you re-upload a file repeatedly, Drive can keep older versions, each using space, until you prune them.
- Orphaned files — files in no folder still count; they're just hard to find.
What does NOT count
- Google-native files — Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms and Sites created in Google's own formats are free and don't use your quota at all. A giant spreadsheet costs nothing; a short phone video costs a lot.
- Files shared with you — files owned by someone else count against their quota, not yours, even though they appear in your "Shared with me". You can't reclaim space by removing them.
- Shortcuts — a shortcut to a file is just a pointer and uses no meaningful space.
It means the only things worth ranking are the binary files you own. That's exactly what DriveBalance does: it sorts your owned, space-using files biggest-first and shows Google-native files greyed out as free, so you never waste time on files that cost nothing.
The 15 GB is shared — so check all three
If your Drive looks lean but your account is still full, the space is going to Google Photos (original-quality backups) or Gmail (big attachments and years of mail). Google's storage manager shows the split across all three and lets you clean each. For a deep dive into the Drive side, open DriveBalance.
See your real Drive usage in seconds
DriveBalance reads Google's own storage figures and ranks every file you own — free files clearly marked, nothing uploaded.