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My phone is an HTC 10. I'm trying to understand what the Storage Manager option in the Storage settings is supposed to do. The text says "Remove photos & videos" and I chose the option "Over 90 days old". So far, it hasn't done anything.

I've found some articles introducing the feature that seem to imply that ALL backed-up photos will be removed every 30/60/90 days.

In Photos, the "Free up space" option removes anything that's already backed up, regardless of age.

So does the storage manager option do what it says it does? When or how often does it run? Does it instead clear all backed-up photos every X days?

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According to this blog (though I don't find Smart storage on my device now on 8.1 but did see that in some earlier version)

Smart Storage is the Android Storage Manager which allows you to automatically delete the files in your device memory that has been backed up in Google Drive. The feature can be specified by a time period of deletion to take place, options range from 30, 60 or 90.

This indicates the time by which the photos & videos on your device will be deleted after being uploaded to Google Photos

(Emphasis supplied)

I haven't used it so can't confirm that but is reasonable since "Free Storage" clears downloads and unused apps instantly

Edit: This doesn't work. Answer retained on OP's suggestions. Please see comments

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  • That is definitely the same dialog that I'm looking at. That makes me think it'll do what I want it to do, but it hasn't done anything yet.
    – Jay Sheridan
    Commented Sep 3, 2018 at 14:22
  • Like mentioned , you need to upload all today to Drive (if not set to auto upload), set that to delete after 30 days and after a month check if actually deleted or not. No immediate confirmation
    – beeshyams
    Commented Sep 3, 2018 at 14:25
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    Sure thing. I set it to 30 instead of 90, so I'll see what it does.
    – Jay Sheridan
    Commented Sep 3, 2018 at 14:36
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    So it is now 33 days later, and nothing has happened automatically. My next experiment is to set it to 90 days and press the button next time it asks me if I want to free up space.
    – Jay Sheridan
    Commented Oct 6, 2018 at 15:47
  • I used the notification, which led me to a card in the Assistant tab of Photos, which deleted everything but the last 30 days even though I set the storage manager setting to 90 days. I am just more confused now. Maybe storage manager was working, but didn't remove anything from before the setting was turned on? Maybe the "free up space" card doesn't use that setting?
    – Jay Sheridan
    Commented Oct 7, 2018 at 15:44

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