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.
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.
Read: A Quick and Easy Guide On How To Block Ads On Android Devices
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Read: The Best and the Most Effective Sony PlayStation Games to be on Android and iOS
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.
Read: Here’s How You Can Track Your Lost and Stolen Android Phones without Tracking App Installed
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.
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.
Read: You Need to Get Ready With the iPhone 12 in 2020 – Here’s Why
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.
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.
Read: Beware of the Fake Airpods! It can be Dangerous for Your Hearing
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.
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.
Skip to content 