[MathMonkeyMan]

I don't remember if he was trying to save space on his Google Drive or on his phone. His question was, mostly, that if he deleted files in one place, where would the space savings appear? I immediately thought of Windows' OneDrive and how it's sort of an automated rsync setup. I didn't know enough about his phone, which apps he was using, or about Google Drive to give an answer better than "I don't know, and I detect that some of your assumptions are probably wrong."

[NavinF]

I grew up before cloud storage was mainstream, but I never thought the new model was confusing.

- Google Drive caches recent files and downloads other files on demand. Just like iCloud Drive, MS OneDrive, etc.

- Deleting files will free up space on your Google account.

- Clicking the "clear offline files" button will free up space on device.

All these offering are quite similar with just a few extra features here and there