As most readers will know, Chromebooks generally come with a small amount of built-in storage. The assumption, of course, is that you will be leveraging Google Drive for the bulk of your storage needs as well as USB drives that you attached to your Chromebook. Chrome OS makes these solutions easy to access all from within the Files app.
But how much storage do you have left in your Google Drive account or on that USB drive you’ve plugged in? Fortunately it is very easy to find out this information right from within the Files app in Chrome OS. In this How To, I’ll show you how to quickly see the storage available on any drive on your Chromebook.
First, open up the Files app on your Chromebook and select My Drive in the directory. Now click on the overflow menu (the three vertical dots). At the bottom of that menu, you will see how much space you have available on Google Drive without ever having to open up a browser page. While going to the Drive site certainly gives you more detailed information like what is consuming space on your account, this quick glance can be handy if you know you are close to the limit on your storage and need to upload that big file to your Drive account.
Available Storage on Google Drive from Chrome OS
The cool thing is, this same trick works on your internal storage as well as external drives you have attached to your Chromebook. To check your internal storage, in the Files app, select the Downloads folder in the directory tree and then use the same overflow menu and you will see the storage you have available on your Chromebook. Likewise, for an external drive, select it in the directory and use the overflow menu to see the storage remaining on it.
Available Storage on Your Chromebook
Available Storage on Your External Drive
The bottom line folks is this function works on pretty much any storage associated with your Chromebook.
For more How To’s for Chrome OS and Android, check out the Tips & Tricks section of the site.
