How to Free Up Space on Yandex Disk Without Deleting Files

Updated July 11, 2026

Sound familiar? A notification pops up saying your Yandex Disk is full, but you don't want to delete anything — your photos, phone videos, and important documents are all in there. The good news: you don't have to delete a thing. Below are practical ways to win back gigabytes while keeping every file intact.

1. Compress Photos and Videos (The Fastest Method)

Photos and videos account for up to 70% of the storage a typical user consumes. Modern compression can reduce their size 2–5x with no noticeable drop in quality. A single phone photo can weigh 3–5 MB; after compression, it's under a megabyte. Across a thousand shots, that's several gigabytes of free space recovered.

Cloudiet does this directly on your Yandex Disk: connect your drive, choose a folder, and compressed versions are saved alongside the originals — or replace them entirely, with a backup if you want to play it safe.

2. Find and Remove Duplicates

The same photos often get uploaded multiple times — from auto-backup, messaging apps, and device-to-device transfers. Check your "Camera" and Downloads folders for repeat files.

3. Archive Large Videos

Video is the heaviest file type in any cloud. A 10-minute 4K clip can easily run several gigabytes. Re-encoding to a modern codec (H.265) can cut that size in half or more, with no visible difference in quality.

4. Empty the Trash

Deleted files on Yandex Disk sit in the Trash for a while before being removed — and they still count against your storage quota. Empty it to reclaim that space immediately.

5. Set Up Automatic Compression for New Files

To keep the problem from coming back, it's worth running new folders through compression on a regular basis. That way your storage never fills up again, and you won't need to upgrade to a bigger plan.

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