Overview of Google Storage Limit Alerts / Banners

Environment

U-M Google, Drive, Mail, Photos, Drive for desktop, shared drives

Issue

  • What do the Google storage limit alerts/banners mean?
  • Why are they showing up on my U-M Google account? On my shared drive?
  • How do I get rid of them?

Resolution

Google automatically alerts users when they are near or at their assigned storage limit for their individual accounts and shared drives. Alerts appear at certain times within different Google services. You can find details on each scenario below. For information on what happens when your storage is full, refer to What Happens When My Storage is Full in U-M Google?

Note: Notifications and banners may vary slightly from the images in this article as Google often makes changes without informing the university.

Individual account (and Shared Account)

  • When your account’s storage is between 80% and 100% full, notifications will be visible in Drive, Photos, and the Drive for desktop app to inform you.
  • In Google Drive, when you click Manage Storage, you will notice the following banners when 80% and 100% full:

Manage Storage view in Google Drive with a yellow banner at the top stating your storage is low

Manage Storage view in Google Drive with red banner at top stating your storage is full

  • In Google Drive, when a collaborator opens a Google file type (e.g., Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc.) that you own, they will notice a banner notification indicating that the user who owns the file is over storage.
  • In Google Drive, the following will be displayed at the bottom of the left-side navigation menu when storage is 100% full:

Storage information in lower left corner of Google Drive with a red alert stating your storage is full and a red button to Manage storage

  • In Google Photos, you will notice the following banner notifications when storage is 80% and 100% full:

Blue warning banner at top of Google Photos stating your account storage is almost full

Red banner at top of Google Photos stating you're out of storage

  • In the Google Drive for desktop app, you will notice the following desktop notifications when storage is 80% and 100% full:

Google Drive for desktop notification stating your storage is almost full

Google Drive for desktop notification stating your storage is full

  • Currently, you will not receive email notifications for storage notifications, and nothing will display in Gmail to indicate you are near/at your storage limit.
  • If you attempt to upload a file to Drive that will cause you to exceed the limit, the file upload will fail, and you will receive a pop-up notice.

Shared drives

  • When your shared drive’s storage is between 80% and 100% full, banner notifications will be visible at the top of the shared drive to inform you. These banners will appear for every member of the shared drive (Managers, Content Managers, Contributors, Commenters, and Viewers) but not for anyone who is only shared individually on a subfolder or file within the drive.
  • In the shared drive, you will notice the following banner notifications when storage is between 80% and 100% full:

Managers and Content Managers view:

Almost full

Yellow banner at top of shared drive that states shared drive storage is low

Note: This banner will turn from yellow to red when the shared drive is 90% full. 

Full

Red banner at top of shared drive stating that the shared drive storage is full

Contributors, Commenters, and Viewers view:

Almost full

Contributors, Commenters, and Viewers will not see any banner notifications until the shared drive is 90% full.

Red banner at top of shared drive stating that shared drive storage is low

Full

Red banner at top of shared drive stating the shared drive storage is full

Individually shared collaborators on subfolders and/or files view:

Collaborators shared at the subfolder or file level will not see any banner notifications when storage is almost full or full.

  • Every member of the shared drive and every user who is shared individually on subfolders or files stored in the drive will receive errors when trying to move, create, upload, or copy content into the shared drive when the storage is full or if the item they are trying to move/create/upload/copy will cause the storage to exceed the limit.

Error when attempting to move content into the drive (from My Drive or another shared drive) - appears in the lower-left corner of the screen:

Google Drive error when trying to move a file into a shared drive that is full

Error when attempting to create a new Google file type (i.e., Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, etc.) in the drive. This error will appear in every Google file type created - appears after clicking New > Google Docs/Sheets/Slides/etc.:

Error in Google Docs when attempting to create a new Doc in a full shared drive

Error when attempting to upload a file to the drive - appears as a pop-up after uploading:

Error when attempting to upload a file to a full shared drive

Error when attempting to copy-paste a file into the drive - appears as a pop-up after copy-pasting:

Pop-up in a Google shared drive stating a file can't be copied because the storage is full

  • All members and collaborators will still have access to view, comment, and edit (depending on their permission level) all existing files and folders within the shared drive.

You will need to reduce the amount of storage in your account / shared drive below 80% of your limit for the banners to disappear. Refer to Tips for Cleaning Up Your U-M Google Account for additional information on reducing your storage in Google.

Additional Information

Need additional information or assistance? Contact the ITS Service Center.

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