I save space on my gaming console's hard drive by doing these 3 things all the time

With home gaming consoles having a greater focus on digital downloads, the need for more hard drive space will always linger around. But even with the biggest hard drive connected to your console, eventually, you'll be forced to delete some content off of it. New games are getting larger in file sizes and taking up more space on platforms that already offer large hard drives for people to store their content. And as more new titles are developed and get updated long after their initial release, they'll hog up even more gigabytes of space.

As someone who downloads many kinds of games onto the consoles I play, I'm constantly downloading and deleting content from them. But instead of always being forced to delete games on a frequent basis, there are steps I take in order to save space for more downloads I may want later on. If you're gaming often on platforms like PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, there are more options available to you for keeping enough data space open for when you need it. Here is how I save space on my gaming console's hard drives by doing these 3 things all the time.

Deleting those extra pics and clips

Anybody that plays games on either PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X will often see the notifications for when you earn an achievement or trophy. But what you may not realize is that those same pings you get will also save media related to that achievement and trophy when they show up. PlayStation 5 will usually save a screenshot of when you got the trophy unlocked, but can also save a short video clip of the gameplay when it happened. The duration of these clips can last from 15 seconds to around a few minutes. So it may capture the moment you got the platinum trophy in Ghost of Tsushima, or the last Call of Duty achievement, but it's also clogging up your hard drive.

On Xbox Series X/S consoles, this isn't too much of a problem, as the console doesn't always do this by default. However, on a PlayStation 5, it can build up pretty quickly, since every trophy you gain, whether it's common or not, will have a clip or picture saved onto the console. Certain Xbox games may do so as well, due to how some developers can program a clip to be saved when it happens, but it's not as common as when it happens with PlayStation owners. Deleting all of this saved media is a smart idea for clearing up space, especially if you are someone that plays so many games on one platform.

The easiest way to deal with this before it gets bad is to go into your system settings and switch off Auto Captures. This stops that from happening every time you gain a trophy, and keeps whatever open hard drive space you have left over from being clogged up. The same thing can be done on Xbox Series X/S through its own settings. Besides this, I actively go into my console's media storage often to delete all the pictures and video clips from trophies I've gained, which opens up more space than one might realize. You'd be surprised just how much will stack up just from these pieces of data with every trophy and achievement.

Stopping automatic downloads

Those updates can add up quick

Besides the games themselves, another thing that can devour gigabytes of storage space on home consoles are brand-new updates. This is especially potent with online games that are constantly being updated, such as Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Fortnite, or other titles like Street Fighter 6 and Mortal Kombat 1. There's always balance adjustments and other content being added, which can fundamentally change the way games play for everyone. And these updates can often take up a lot of space very quickly.

Updates are often downloaded automatically, usually when you first boot up a console that was turned off. And before you know it, your console is downloading a 20GB update for one game, and may be gearing up for an additional 10GB for another. Eventually, these all add up quickly over time, especially if you're playing multiple online games that are new or ongoing experiences. The best way to get a handle on this is to stop downloads right when they begin, or completely prevent your console from downloading updates automatically.

For most people, the automatic updates are convenient when a console is in rest mode. That way, players don't have to worry about waiting for an update to happen when they want to hop online at the moment, by then it's already downloaded and installed. But again, this can take up valuable hard drive space. At some point, you may be able to look at a game you have installed and see that it takes up a whopping 150GB or more because of this. It's worth the minor inconvenience of having to update specific games manually every so often if it means you'll have the extra bulk of data available by not downloading an update for a game you're not actively playing.

Sneaky custom saved data

Certain games get bloated

One other thing to look out for that is more uncommon is when certain games will have bloated saved data files. This can come from titles that have custom character modes or other custom creations that stack upon the standard save data from it. Games like the WWE 2K series or the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games are good examples of this, where custom superstars or custom parks will get saved often. And if you're someone downloading the creation data that people have shared online with games like these, you're having those games take up even more space than you realize.

It's possible to delete this kind of save data without losing any progress within the games themselves. Custom data usually gets saved as a separate file on your console's hard drive, which is separated from everything else like options and main campaign progress. It's common to be able to delete that stuff from your system's storage settings, but also possible in the same games they were created, where you can just delete the creations straight from the menus. If you're not actively playing a game like this and end up deleting it from the console completely, the custom data won't be left behind without the game in most cases. It opens up a lot of hard drive space.

This is a smart thing to keep in mind for anyone that plays games with custom creations being a key part of the online experience. Even something like a customer fighter or wrestler with mild alterations can still take up gigabytes in some cases, which can open up a lot of space if you get rid of them. The same can be said for custom game types in certain first-person shooters like Halo, where a mode like Forge can really build up the file size of the game with all the things you can create within it.

Cleaning out the house

We often don't realize just how much space on our consoles that we take up with things we may not need. Whether it's games that we no longer play, or parts of games we still dabble in, there's a lot of hard drive space being spent on many things. Because I like having data open for when I want to install something brand-new, or update a game that I'm playing all the time, I often take these actions to make sure I have enough for what I need. Those who try out these steps themselves may discover they have a lot more hard drive space to play around with on their consoles, especially after cleaning out all the clutter that was getting in the way.