Why Your Photos and Videos Take Up So Much Space

Phone cameras have improved enormously, and the files have grown with them. A single high-resolution photo can be several megabytes. A few thousand pictures can fill many gigabytes without any single file looking unreasonable.

Video stores many pictures every second, so it grows much faster than photos. Higher resolution and higher frame rates make clips larger still. One long recording can use more space than hundreds of photos, which is why checking videos first often gives the biggest reward.

Holding the shutter takes a rapid series of near-identical images. Taking three or four attempts at the same scene is natural. And some apps keep both the original and the edited version. None of these feels wasteful when it happens, but together they are a large share of many libraries.

Pictures and videos received in chats can be saved automatically to your gallery, and the same image forwarded through different groups ends up saved more than once. Reviewing automatic-save settings in your chat apps can stop this at the source.

Start by finding the largest files, since a few big ones often matter more than many small ones. Remove duplicates, screenshots and blurry shots. Consider lowering video quality in your camera settings if you do not need the highest setting. And back up what matters before deleting.

Yolo Storage Cleaner lists your biggest photos first and shows the real saving from shrinking them before you download anything.