On Thursday, June 25, we discussed where members’ emails, photos and documents are stored.
Email:
This is stored in the cloud, on your service provider’s computers. However, temporary copies are “cached” on your phone, tablet or laptop. “Email caching is the process of automatically saving copies of your emails on your device (like your phone or computer). Instead of redownloading every message directly from the internet’s email server every time you open them, your app uses this local “cache” to display them instantly” (Gemini)
https://www.sdmfoundation.org/2026/04/08/what-is-cache-tech-terms-explained/
In the case of Gmail: “ Google Cache and the Gmail app typically store between 30 days of recent messages up to your last 30,000 emails locally on your mobile device, depending on your device storage and app settings. The amount of email data cached on your phone or tablet is controlled by:
- Days of Mail to Sync: In the Gmail app, you can specify how many days’ worth of emails are downloaded for offline viewing. This defaults to 30 days, but it can be adjusted in your account settings.
- Attachments: To save storage space, attachments are not cached by default. They are only downloaded to your device cache when you deliberately open or save them. “
If you find that Gmail is consuming an unexpectedly large amount of storage (e.g., several gigabytes), it is often due to auto-downloaded images, temporary media buffers, or corrupted cache files.
To manage or clear the amount of data the Gmail app caches on your device:
On Android: Go to Settings > Apps > Gmail > Storage, and tap Clear Cache.
On iPhone: Navigate to your Gmail Settings > Your Account > Days of mail to sync to lower the cached window. “
(information edited from Gemini AI)
Photos:
The images and videos stored on a mobile phone come from several sources:
- Those taken with the phone’s camera
- Those from WhatsApp messages
- Screenshots
- Images downloaded from the Internet
The apps used to manage photos vary according to the phone manufacturer.
Samsung phones:
have a pre-installed app called Gallery. This is an image and video manager designed for viewing, organising, and editing media. It supports formats like JPEG, GIF, and MP4, and features sorting, and basic-to-advanced photo enhancement tools. It can also sync across several Samsung Galaxy devices using Microsoft OneDrive or Apple’s iCloud.
Apple iPhones:
do not have a traditional “Gallery” app. Instead, Apple uses the built-in Photos App for all of your image viewing, editing, and organising. It automatically syncs your camera roll and integrates with iCloud. This means that copies of the images are stored in the user’s cloud storage.
Note: Onedrive and iCloud are syncing services, not backups. If a photo is deleted from the Cloud, then it is also deleted from the synchronised device. If you don’t want this to happen, you can disconnect the device from OneDrive or iCloud. The files are still there in the Cloud storage, but must be managed manually.
Android:
provides the Google Photos App for both Android phones and iPhones. This shows photos taken by the phone, as well as those stored in your Google photos account in the cloud.
Google Photos occupies some of the 15 GB of free storage space provided with a Google account. This is shared with Gmail and Google Drive. To minimise cluttering up the cloud storage:
Turn Photos Backup Off. When set to on, all photos taken with the phone are automatically uploaded to Google Photos. When set to Off, you can choose which photos to upload.
Turn Storage Saver on. Uploaded photos (which can be very large, (especially those taken with new phones with megapixel cameras) are then compressed when uploaded. This saves Cloud storage space, without much quality loss.
If your Google Cloud Storage is getting full, use Google One to clear up some space. See previous JCC presentation: https://javeacomputerclub.com/2026/04/03/clearing-out-your-google-storage/
Chris uses Google Photos to create Web Albums, which can include descriptive text and videos and be shared with others via a link. This is better than sending photos and videos as email attachments, because attachments clog the cloud storage space of both sender and recipient.
Here is a web Album she created for the Friends of the Museum association (AMUX): https://photos.app.goo.gl/vfwU2BbaeLkcYxvaA AMUX visita Bocairent – Un pueblo excavado en la roca
File management:
To manage images, media and downloads stored on your phone, use a File manager App. These can categorise media according to their type and origin. Try the Google’s Files app. This comes free of adverts and has built-in file viewing capabilities, including PDFs, images, video and music.
If your photos are precious to you, copy them to a thumb drive or external hard drive as backups. See this previous JCC presentation: https://javeacomputerclub.com/2026/04/18/downloading-photos-from-your-phone/
Good luck!
Christine Betterton-Jones – Knowledge Junkie