5 Of The Best Ways To Free Up Storage On Android
It might seem like having 128 GB of storage on your Android device is a lot, but you'd be surprised to see how fast you can blow through that. If you're finding that you're out of space, deleting things can become a hassle since you have to decide what's worth keeping. Checking your Android device's storage will show you a breakdown of what's taking up the most space, whether that's pictures, apps, or something else.
If you see that a game is taking up a ton of space, something like "Genshin Impact" or "Fortnite," then you can easily delete those to make room. However, it's not always going to be as simple as that. If your camera roll is taking up the most space then finding certain pictures to delete is a much tougher task.
There are ways to ease this burden, and it might even lead you to places you didn't expect would ever take up space.
Clear your cache
Going into your apps storage specifically will show you that a lot of app data is being stored as a cache. This is typically only a few megabytes at a time, but it certainly adds up with several apps. You can safely erase any data that's in your cache, as it's not at all important or irreplaceable. You will start to build it back out as you use these apps again, but it can free up a decent chunk of space on your phone if you're in need.
To do this, go into your Android device's storage settings, click on any app, and then select the "Clear Cache" option. This will free up the space that's listed in the settings, and it'll vary by app. If you do this for every app on your phone, you might be able to free up a gigabyte or two, depending on how many apps you have installed.
Delete your downloads
As is the case with your PC, you'll want to make sure you clean out your Downloads folder when you can. It might not seem like much, but you'd be surprised to see how much storage that folder can take up. If you've downloaded PDFs just to read them for a few seconds, only to forget about them down the road, then you should delete those first. The same thing goes for images, videos, and anything else you downloaded from a website and either forgot about, or don't use.
You'll want to go into your downloads and make sure you don't have anything in there taking up a big chunk of space. Unlike clearing an app's cache, the downloads folder can have a bunch of dead weight or otherwise useless files in there waiting to be deleted — though double-check in case anything important isn't still in that folder.
Free up space in photos
If you're somebody who likes to take a lot of pictures, then there's a good chance your Android device is filled with them. One or two pictures won't really make a dent, but having hundreds in your photos folder will start to take a toll. Since you're in the Android ecosystem, you're able to safely back up everything to your Google Drive. Your Drive does have a storage limit, but it's not tied to your phone at all. This means you'll be moving storage space from your phone and into the cloud on Drive, freeing up room on your Android device in the process.
To clear this space, simply go into your Google Photos app, click your profile icon in the top-right, and select the "Free up space" option. Any space freed up from Android devices will vary, but don't be surprised to see a couple of gigs removed from your phone. These photos are already backed up in the cloud, so don't worry about losing them forever.
Delete your downloaded maps
Many rely on Google Maps for navigation when they're out and about since it's (most of the time) very reliable. When you're on a long road trip, you might see your internet connection drop in and out, making a downloaded map very important to have. What you might forget to do is delete your maps once you're finished with them. One map probably isn't much of an issue, but if you're traveling a lot and downloading several offline maps, they're going to take up space.
You might not think it's a big deal, but offline maps can take up quite a bit of space on your Android device, depending on how big the area map you're downloading is. If you are one of those people, just make sure you clean up the downloads every now and then to free up some space. You can always redownload them in the future if you need them.
Get rid of old apps
The tried and true method of freeing up space on your Android device is simply deleting apps, though that's not always ideal. As a last resort, you can go into the list of your apps and check what ones you use and what ones you don't. You'll be able to tell when the last time you used an app or how little you use it by using something like Google's Digital Wellbeing settings.
If it's been a while since the last use, it's probably safe to delete. Most apps don't take up a ton of space on their own, but if we're talking about dozens of them, then there is a real impact in deleting several.
Many phones will automatically put an app to sleep if it's been a long time since you've last used it. You won't be seeing notifications from these apps anymore, and if you don't care about that fact, then maybe it's time to delete it for good anyway. Most apps will remain on the Google Play Store whenever you want it back.