How to free up space on Android device

Time needed: 10 minutes.

Clearing cached app data

1. Clearing cached app data
   

   After digging into the app settings screen, you will find that these apps are storing cached data in storage. The data ranges from few kilobytes to megabytes and sometimes, even more, depending on the size of the app, and its functionality. The cached data alone is the reason your Android device is taking Gigabytes of storage. Open the app settings or download any cache cleaning application, tap Clear Cache button and clean the trash from the device storage.
   
   Many applications using Ads also store Ads data as the cache. So, wiping the cache won’t affect your phone in any way. However, some applications use to cache data to improve the user experience and store current app data in it. It may affect these apps, and you may lose some work if the app is running, so make sure you clear the cache of individual apps and save yourself from data loss.
   
   

2. Take care of the Downloads folder
   

   The downloads folder is a cave of junk data. Most of the times we download videos or photos or memes, and it remains in the download folder for a long time. As a result, it covers plenty of user’s precious storage. Make sure your download folder is clean, delete the junk data and keep the files that you need. There will undoubtedly be much junk in your Download folder.
   
   

3. Dump already backed up photos
   

   Google Photos offers free unlimited storage for pictures at an optimized size for all Android or iOS users. Pixel users get Unlimited full-size image Backup for the lifetime. Use Google Photos to back up your videos and picture to save storage on your phones. You can always access your photos from anywhere in the world using your Google account. You can access them anywhere with your Google account on the desktop, and any phone with Google Photos app installed.
   
   

4. Remove unnecessary Map data
   

   Google Maps has a feature that allows users to store offline maps for a selected area. It costs some hundreds of megabytes of data and sometimes more than five hundred megabytes. Save data storage by wiping the cache from the app setting screen. Hit the clear cache button and the unnecessary junk files will be removed. Remember, your offline maps will be gone. You can also remove offline maps manually by navigating to the three-line menu button, then tap “Offline maps” and the storage used by each map you stored is shown below its name. Manually delete these maps which are no longer needed.
   

5. Turn on Smart Storage
   

   The smart storage feature is available in Android Oreo. When you turn on this feature, the software removes backed up Google Photos after a particular time. You can select the time period from the settings.
   

6. Get a microSD Card
   

   Sadly, the microSD card option is not available in many Android phones now, for instance, Pixel users can’t have a microSD card. But those who are blessed with a phone which supports a microSD should consider buying one to get more space on their phone. Move all of your important data on the microSD card that you want to keep and free your internal storage.
   

7. Use Cloud Drives
   

   For those who can’t have a microSD card should consider moving to cloud drives such as Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox. Why? Because cloud drives are the best option if you need to keep data somewhere secure to access it anytime, anywhere. You can move your documents and files on Google Drive or any other service that you like. The only limitation to this is the internet, if you don’t have an internet connection, you can’t access your files. If your drive storage is exceeding the free 15GB on Google Drive, then you can get more 100GB of space for just $1.99 per month.
   

8. Use Oreo tools
   

   With the release of Android Oreo, Google released a set of tools and features to help Android users with this issue. The storage section now shows all the types of files that are making internal storage full. You can hit the storage tab and see what is taking up your phone’s storage. There’s “Free storage button” which lets you clean the unnecessary files inside the files app. Below is the screenshot of storage settings from a phone running Android Pie.
   
   

9. WhatsApp Media Junk
   

   WhatsApp junk is another reason that storage goes out of hand. The videos, memes, and pictures sent on WhatsApp are storage-stealing culprits. Cleaning one by one is also a hectic task to do. Go to “WhatsApp Settings > Data and storage usage > Media auto-download” and turn off auto downloads. It will let you only download the files you need; the phone will not auto download the videos and memes sent in that awkward WhatsApp group you are in. You can also check the storage usage by clicking “Storage Usage” from the same settings menu in WhatsApp. Free up space on Android by examining which chat is using more storage.
   

10. Use the “Files Go” app
    

    Files Go is another app from Google that lets you delete all the unwanted and temporary files from your phone. It is actually one of the best junk managers out there. It lets you clean Junk files, Duplicate files, Unused apps, large files, and temporary files. Download from Google Play Store and make your Android free of junk and unnecessary cache files.