Use Android’s built-in storage tool to clear App cache Modern versions of Android have a Storage pane that will show you exactly what is taking up storage on your device. It doesn't take long for a new Android phone or tablet to get cluttered up with rolls of pictures, redundant apps, unused widgets, cached files and the troublingly vague 'Misc' data that seems to. We have come up with different options to delete Android trash and free up space on Android as well. Feel free to try these techniques to empty trash from your device in seconds. Also, you can share the guide with your friends too to teach them how to find trash on Android phones and clear junk files in no time. Somewhere, deep in your Android tablet’s bosom, lies a storage device or two. That storage works like the hard drive in a computer, and for the same purpose: to keep apps, music, videos, pictures, and a host of other information for the long term. Android tablets come with 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of internal storage.
Why Storage Disappears So Fast? |
How to Check Storage Condition on Android? |
How to Free up Space on Android Phones? |
Android devices are fantastic for their ease of use and customization options, however eventually all your precious space is filled. We will look at ways to effectively free up Android phone storage. This problem is particularly acute for phones more than a year old; performance is impacted if the user does not release Android phone storage. We will look at ways to effectively free up Android phone storage.
Why Storage Disappears So Fast?
The storage is not a live creature that can run away itself, so check whether you match any of the following conditions:
Lots of pre-installed apps: some manufacturers are notorious for bloatware (e.g. Asus and Samsung), so their pre-installed apps, along with system-level Android OS, both take their toll immediately – literally right out of the box.
Install apps in built-in phone space: sometimes you didn't notice that the app installation location was set as the built-in phone space not the SD card. The limited phone space is easier to be filled with apps.
Limited storage capacity: even though you can address limited internal storage (e.g. 16GB) with external storage, the low storage warning will also appear with the microSD card if you are a heavy multimedia user.
Phone trash accumulates: temp files, duplicates files, cache, and other unnecessary files are produced all the time. This is a natural by-product of apps, system files, and the OS itself. Over time, this is cumulative and can have a major impact on phone responsiveness if you do not clean the junk regularly.
How to Check Storage Condition on Android?
Before to start a storage release, we should figure out what takes the most space on our phone for solving this problem effectively.
1. Go to your phone main menu, and find out the 'File' icon inside to tap in. Clearly you will see different options there - Category, Storage, and Cloud. Simply tap the 'Storage', your phone space using condition is clearly presented here.
Here you are allowed to view total space and available space on both phone and SD card. Also, simply tap the two locations individually, all the folders inside will show up for your checking.
2. Enter your Android 'Settings' to look for the 'Power and Storage' option. Tap to access it, the 'Storage Space' is there showing the ROM and SD card available space. Tap the button, a circle graph presents you the space that each type of data takes up, for both phone and SD card as well.
How to Free up Space on Android Phones?
There are four ways to reclaim your storage:
1. Clean out junk items regularly
Always use a good mobile management app to clean/remove your phone junk. Examples of junk includes outdated cache, installation packages (APK), uninstalled app remnants, and app cache. This is an effective way to release Android phone space.
Note: Most Android phones already feature pre-installed management app, e.g. Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, Meizu, etc. If your phone doesn't already have one, simply download one from the Play Store (for example, Tencent WeSecure)
For our example, we will use the OPPO FIND 7 built-in app.
• Launch your app of choice.
• Tap 'Scan' to commence scanning – this will search for viruses, potential dangers, and junk items using up space.
• Once scanning finishes, the app will automatically delete the junk.
• Or enter the 'File' menu to use the 'Clearup' feature to clean the useless cache.
• Tap 'End all' to wipe them out.
2. Expand external storage (if available)
Add a large capacity Micro SD card, the card storage better starts at 32GB.
3. Files transfer
If you don't want spend money on a SD card, you can do like these to release plenty of space:
• Transfer large files like videos, images, and music to your computer.
Keygen for after effects cc mac. • Alternatively, upload the big files to the cloud like Google Photos, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Flickr, etc. You can download the apps to backup your files and delete the copies on your phone or just upload on the website.
4. Uninstall rarely used apps
Fast uninstall:
• Long press the app icon until a small 'x' appears near the icon.
• Tap the 'x' to commence uninstalling.
• Tap 'Delete' to confirm app deletion.
On some Android phones, long press the app icon and drag it to the trashcan at the screen top instead.
Direct uninstall:
• Enter the phone 'Settings'.
• Enter 'Application management'.
• Choose 'Installed' category.
• Select the apps you rarely use and tap 'Uninstall'.
• Tap 'Uninstall' to confirm the selection.
Note: Following app deletion, use the phone management app to clean any residual files from the uninstallation process to free more space.
5. App transfer
Transfer pre-installed to the external SD card. (Only available to Android devices with external storage)
• Enter the phone 'Settings'.
• Enter 'Application management'.
• Choose the 'Installed' or 'All' category including the pre-installed apps.
• Select all the apps individually and tap 'Move to user space' to transfer to the SD card.
• Use the phone management app to clean the trash.
If your Android device is more than 3 years old, we would strongly suggest changing to a more up-to-date device with more advanced features and storage. You've though about it as well? Then both OnePlus 3T and UMI Super are pretty good choices that not only sport large storage but also fast process speed - 6GB RAM+128GB storage and 4GB+32GB (256GB expansion). Therefore, you won't be bothered by the storage limitation again. Want more affordable premium Android phone choices? You can have a look here on Gearbest.
Before I forget, there is currently a top phone brand sale at that with up to 68% off for a limited time only. Have a look before it's too late! Hope this article does work for you :)
You may also want to read: |
Android Masterclass | Easy steps to fix frozen or dead Android phones |
7 sure-fire ways to speed up your Android smartphone |
Android / iOS Guide | 3 easy ways to save your mobile data |
It is no secret that the storage of both android phones and tablets can easily be affected and filled up just by downloading apps, media files such as music and movies, and cache data for offline usage. In addition to that, numerous lower-end devices may come with only a few gigabytes (GBs) of storage which entirely does not help.
Most of the time will be spent on micromanaging your phone’s internal storage; especially if your device does not have a big internal storage to begin with anyway.
Clean Up Tablet Free
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If you find yourself regularly freeing up space on your android phones or tablets, you may want to get a phone or tablet with more storage next time.
Accessing the Storage Pane
Latest versions of android contain a Storage Pane that will show you exactly the things taking up space in your device. These are the things that you can decide to delete and to dismember to free up space on your Android device.
To view this, you will have to open Settings on your phone and click on Storage. From here, you will be able to see how much of your device’s space or storage has been taken up by apps and their data, by pictures and videos, audio files, downloads, cached data, and miscellaneous other files.
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However, this may vary according to which version of Android you are using. If you’re using a different and a slightly older version of Android, then the steps might be different.
In Android 8.0 Oreo, Google applied an approach essentially different from other preceding versions of android by breaking down the Storage Menu into a more granular list.
Oreo took a different approach by filing groups and files together by category whereas the list was assorted together by apps and then varying types of files in Nougat and lower.
To put things into perspective, when you open the “Photos and Videos” option, it will not only show you the pictures and videos in your storage but as well as any associated apps such as photo or video editors.
Read: Is Your Android Smartphone Getting Too Slow? Here Are The Things That You Need To Do
How can you free up space on Andriod Oreo and other versions?
Some apps may not fall into the predefined categories which is why the category “Other apps” exists to deal with the overflow for everything else. A “Files” option also exists to categorize any file that does not belong to any other group/category.
Despite all this, there is an easy way to free up space on android Oreo without having to deal with all this cluttered mess by clicking onto the “Free Up Space” button at the top.
Read: How to Fix Insufficient Storage Available in Android
Infrequently used apps
This will show you a list of Downloads on your device as well as any photos and videos that have already been backed up (this is a simple check option, not a full list), and any “Infrequently used apps” if applicable.
Choose what you want to delete and just like that, free space on android is now available. No need to pay and to spend anything — it’s free and it’s not difficult to do.
But such as the case that this does not deliver enough free space on android then you may have to manually free up space on your android device.
Read: LIST: Android Antivirus Apps that Contains Malware and Other Unwanted Software That You Need to Delete Now!
Observe different apps and how much data they’re storing—for instance, apps like Google Play Music (or various music streaming apps) can store quite a bit of data as they stream. Free that out so you can enjoy yourself an availability of space.
Free up space on Android Nougat
Meanwhile in Android 7.0 Nougat and below, just tap an option to see exactly what is taking up your space and delete it.
For instance, you could click on Apps to see the list of which among them using up the most space in your storage and remove them.
Read: Delete This Android Video App Now Because it’s Hiding Malware
Click on Downloads to view your downloads list from which you may delete files and tap cached data to clear data of all installed apps. Use the other options to see which files are taking up space and delete the ones you no longer want.
Keep in mind that the app itself, its data, and its cache all add up to the total space taken up by the app. For example, if you use Spotify and you have cached a lot of music offline, it is possible Spotify may be using over 1 GB of space.
You could delete Spotify’s cache to forcibly remove this all, or launch the Spotify app and tell it to cache less data for offline listening. Any app that caches data for offline use will function like this.
Read: Here Are Six (6) Helpful Utility Apps to Have on Your Android Smartphone
You can see how much space an app is using for those data files and remove the cached data for an individual app by tapping it in the Apps list through which you could view by tapping Apps on the storage pane or by tapping Apps on the main Settings screen.
Files Go
Another way to free up space on android is by the use of Files Go that can be installed for free from Play Store. As you may have known, all these free applications in Play Store might be lurking around your storage.
In terms of freeing up space, you can choose to delete it so that you utilize the space more effectively and efficiently.
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Through this, you can see any unused apps (if you have any), low res files, duplicate files, temporary files, downloads, and even those files that are utilizing a large portion of your device’s storage. Among the different ways, it is easy to use and allows you to quickly detect the apps and files that are just wasting storage space.
Clicking on any of the category cards given will let you view contents of said category which will grant you the access to choose what you want to delete. Even the Temporary Files option lets you see which apps are holding on to data, allowing you to clear them out individually.
Additionally, the “Files” button below will let you view your internal storage in a more categorized option that is identical to Nougat or the previous versions of android. This is a great option for people who prefer the old Storage layout.
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Each option will show you a more granular breakdown of its contents. For instance, the Images option will show you everything from that folder, including Screenshots, Downloads, and the like. You can also choose to sort the results by name, date, and size.
Using SD Cards
The usage of SD card can also help you free up space on android devices. However, it is becoming more uncommon in present phones to have a microSD card slot. But if your phone does have one, you may want to take advantage of that by using it.
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The additional storage will be able to hold more music, videos, pictures, and other media files–and, in some cases, and even apps as some apps allow you to transfer their cache locations to the SD card as well.
Moving apps to the SD card depends on which android version you are using. Users running on android Marshmallow and above can do this by simply formatting the SD card as internal storage to free up space on android. The SD card will then be recognized as local storage on that device. The system itself will decide which apps make the most sense to transfer to the SD card.
Transferring to SD card in Android Marshmallow
If you are using a pre-Marshmallow version of Android, you can transfer apps through the use of Android’s built-in features, or move any app by rooting your phone and partitioning your SD card.
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Lastly, photos may use a large portion of your internal storage as well. To prevent this, you can store your media on an app that automatically uploads your photos on an online account like Google Photos, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Flickr, or something else.
How To Free Up Space On Android Tablet
Google Photos is automatically installed into the “Photos” app on your Android device and delivers unlimited storage of photos. This way you will not only lose track of your photos but also be able to free up space on android devices.
You may also do this with technique with other files like uploading a large music collection to a service like Google Play Music and stream it back to your device over an Internet connection.
Read: The Top 5 Amazing and Useful Android Travel Apps
These techniques may only free up some space on your android device. The next time around, it would be best to choose a phone with the most internal storage space according to your liking.
What do you think about these tips on how you can free up space on Android? This will be relevant especially now that there are a lot of problems happening.