Free Up Space on Your Chromebook

Free Up Space on Your Chromebook.

While they are a decent alternative to laptops, many Chromebooks lack storage space. While there are a few high-end Chromebooks with storage capacities ranging from 128GB to 256GB, most budget Chromebooks do not exceed 64GB.

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Of course, you can expand your Chromebook’s storage with compatible USB storage devices like thumb drives and external hard drives. But what if you don’t have an external storage device? Or don’t you like moving around with a flash drive? We’re going to show you six effective ways to free up space on your Chromebook.

How Chromebooks Handle Low Storage

When your Chromebook is low on disk space, Chrome OS will continually display a reminder or notification that your “device is low on space.” But you don’t have to wait until you get this error message before freeing up space on your Chromecast device.

Google warns that your Chromebook may automatically start deleting downloaded files, unused accounts, browsing data, and more when it runs out of storage space. This highlights the importance of monitoring Chromebook storage before it runs out. Free up storage space yourself, or your Chromebook will do it – perhaps deleting important files in the process.

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Check Your Chromebookâ€™s Storage Status

The first step to freeing up space is to find out the storage status of your Chromebook. Fortunately, there is a storage management tool built into the Chrome OS settings app.

Use this tool to monitor Chromebook storage; it tells you how much memory is in use and how much is available. You can also use the storage management tool to wipe your device.

Launch the Settings app, click Device in the sidebar and select Manage Storage.

You can also launch the tool from the Files application. Tap the three-dot menu icon and tap the storage indicator at the bottom of the menu. You will be taken to the repository management page.

At the top of the storage management page is an indicator that shows the storage status of your Chromebook. You will also find categories of components taking up space on your device.

My Files: Describes the total storage used by media (audio, video, images, recordings, screenshots, etc.) and downloaded files on your Chromebook. Selecting this option will open the Files application.

Browsing data. When you surf the Internet in Chrome, the browser stores a lot of data in the Chromebook – browsing history, website cookies, cached images, site settings, password, etc. The Browsing Data category is a collection of all Chrome data stored on your device.

Applications and extensions. This category includes the disk space used by the apps installed on your Chromebook, including their data and cache files.

Linux storage: This is the disk space allocated for installing and running Linux applications. You will find this option in the storage management menu if you’ve ever set up a Linux development environment on your Chromebook.

System: This is the storage space used by Chrome OS and other built-in apps. You cannot uninstall system files or applications.

You can also check the available storage space using Chrome. Type or paste chrome: // quota-internals into the address bar and press Enter. On the Summary tab, Free Disk Space for Profile Directory is the available storage for the Chromebook.

How to Free Up Space on Chromebook

You now understand how Chrome OS groups and manages disk storage. In the next section, we’ll go over some space-saving tips to help you free up space on your Chromebook.

1. Delete redundant files or move them to cloud storage

Open the Files app and browse through each folder. Look for images, screenshots, screen recordings, videos, application preference files, and other documents you no longer need or need.

Tap the Sort Options (AZ) icon and select Size. This will sort your files in descending order by size; the largest files are displayed at the top.

With this order, you can easily identify the heavy files taking up space on your Chromebook and delete the ones you don’t need.

Plus, you can back up your files to the cloud instead of deleting them. Move the files to your Google Drive folder. If you’ve reached your 15GB free Google Drive storage quota, you can get this Google One privilege (for Chromebooks). Perk gives you 100 GB of free cloud storage for 12 months. This allows you to free up space on your Chromebook without losing files.

2. Remove unused applications

Apps create user data, cache data, and other unnecessary files that take up storage space. Saving multiple apps you’re not using can quickly run out of disk space on your Chromebook. Uninstall unneeded apps to free up storage space. Go to the Chrome OS storage management menu and select Apps & Extensions.

Go through the list and look for apps or extensions that you hardly use. Select the app you want to remove from your Chromebook and click the Remove button.

Note. You cannot uninstall major system apps like Chrome, Files app, Play Store, Web Store, etc.

3. Clear browsing data in Chrome

Not only does Chrome require a lot of memory, the browser also creates and stores all kinds of data on your device. Some of this data is important, but others can be dispensed with. Delete some of the unnecessary browsing data to free up space on your Chromebook.

Go to Settings> Device> Manage Storage and select View Data. A new tab will open where you can clear your browsing data.

In the General section, select the Cached Images and Files check box, set the Time Range to All Time, and then click the Clear Data button. Then, you should see how much space will be freed up on your Chromebook.

If you still need to free up space, go to the “Advanced” section, select other unnecessary data items (for example, download history, site settings, cookies, etc.) that you want to delete, and click “Clear data”.

Please note that clearing “cookies and other site data” will free up a huge amount of storage space. However, the operation will log you out of Google and other accounts associated with Chrome. Instead, you should delete cookies for individual websites.

Open Chrome and go to Settings> Privacy & Security> Cookies and Other Site Data> View All Cookies and Site Data and click the trash can icon next to the site for which you want to delete the cookie.

You should look for sites labeled as Local Storage, Database Storage, File System, and Service Workers. These websites store persistent cookies and other data locally on your Chromebook.

4. Remove offline files

When you enable offline accessibility for a file or folder in Google Drive, Chrome OS downloads the file and stores it on your device (as a cache file). After that, you will be able to access files on your Chromebook without an Internet connection. This feature gives you offline access to your file, but uses your local storage instead.

If you’ve turned on offline accessibility for large files or folders, remove them from your Chromebook and access them from your Google Drive folder. This will help you free up a lot of space on your Chromebook.

Open the Files app, expand the Google Drive category and select the Offline folder. After that, select the folders or files and turn off the Available offline switch in the menu bar.

Again, if you’re running out of Google Drive space, take advantage of the Google One Chromebook privilege, which gives you 100GB of free cloud storage for 12 months.

5. Reduce or remove the Linux disk size

Google recommends setting aside at least 7.5 GB for Linux development. But if you barely install or use Linux apps, you can free up space on your Chromebook by reducing your Linux storage. Select the Linux repository on the repository management page and click the Change button next to the Disk size field.

Move the slider to the left to reduce the size of the Linux disk according to your preference (you cannot reduce the size to less than 4.1 GB) and click Resize.

Uninstall your Linux development environment unless you intend to install or use any Linux app on your Chromebook.

6. Use cleaning apps

There are cleaning apps that work wonders on Android devices. Many of these apps are also compatible with Chrome OS. Check out this list of 10 effective cleaning apps to find out more. Open the Play Store, install any of the cleaning apps, and remove unnecessary files from your Chromebook with the click of a button.

Get All the Space You Need

To free up space on your Chromebook, you need to delete unneeded files and apps. Saving files to the cloud will also create additional storage space. You should also consider deleting user accounts that are no longer active or in use. On the Chromebook sign-in screen, tap the drop-down icon next to your account and select Remove this user.

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