When you need the most space on your phone to install an app or take a photo, the message “Memory full” appears. It does not fail. And running out of storage space on your Android mobile can turn into a tragedy. Sometimes, we resort to deleting a few photos or removing an app, but in the long run it ends up being useless because the space is quickly taken up. Luckily, There are effective solutions.
There are many ways to free up space on a cell phone, although most of them require resetting the cell phone or deleting important information. However, there are some effective ways to save space without deleting anything. Or at least, nothing that could be important. In this article, we explain how.
Have you tried turning your phone off and on again? This is not a joke
It is possible that when you hear about restarting your phone to fix a problem, you laugh inwardly and remember computer jokes. However, we must tell you that turning your smartphone on and off can help solve more problems than you think.
Without going any further, this could save you space, because when a mobile phone turns off, the processes it is running stop and with it too many temporary files are deleted that are in the device’s internal memory. The savings may not be excessive and sometimes ridiculous, but they are more effective than you might think. And if you haven’t turned off your phone in a while, it’s even more true.
Don’t delete files, upload them to the cloud
If you use your phone to save files such as documents and other files, you are probably taking up a lot of space in the internal memory of the device. The most practical thing is to always be attentive and delete what is not really important, but if you already have it up to date and they are essential to you, It is better to transfer them to Google Drive or another cloud.
In addition to freeing up space, keeping your files in the cloud is a great way to protect them if your phone breaks.
We say Google Drive because it is the option that best suits an Android mobile since this system also belongs to Google. However, it can also help you any other cloud storage application like Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive or any other.
In this regard, it would be appropriate to your photo and video gallery was also in the cloud. Taking into account that these elements are the ones that ultimately consume the most space, you will be able to free up a lot of memory. In this aspect, many applications are also useful to you, although here Google Photos really wins, which is native and, depending on your mobile model, it may even be the application that comes by default.
And what about external memory for files?
Although cloud storage is very convenient and practical, the truth is that we cannot ignore the possibility of using external memory that connect via mobile USB-C. And even more so if your mobile does not have space to insert a microSD card.
A microSD card is still very useful for adding extra space to your mobile, but not all devices are compatible with them.
Whether in USB flash drive format or as a larger hard drive or SSD, you can easily connect it to your mobile and manage it from android file manager. Of course, it is recommended to back up files that you should not access regularly, as it could be a bit tedious to have to keep the external memory connected or to always have to carry it with you.
Delete files forever, but only duplicates
In many cases, and completely unconsciously, we tend to store many identical files. For example, photos that we receive via WhatsApp and that we already had or that are sent to us via different chats, documents that we have downloaded more than once and for a long time, etc. It is therefore advisable to use tools with which to detect duplicate files.
Generally speaking, the Google Files application has among its functions that of do a file cleanup that can be deleted, including duplicates. If you add to this apps that specialize in detecting duplicate photos from the gallery, you could benefit from considerable space savings.
Google Files to end junk files
Without leaving aside the principle of not deleting anything important, there are elements that are completely superfluous and can be deleted. In the previous section, we talked about duplicates and the Google Files application. Also, This application is also capable of removing other junk files which are of little use in the system and yet can take up a lot of space.
You just need to open the app, go to the tab To do the housework bottom left and click the button Free up XX MB/GB (XX actually indicates the amount of data that can be deleted). It must be said that this action is also valid for deleting data from the cache, although in the next section we will explain how to manually delete items stored in said memory.
The cache can be transformed into a memory tray
Clearing the app cache is of vital importance in order to Optimize mobile storage. The web browser alone stores dozens of files that, no matter how small, end up taking up a considerable amount of space in the internal memory.
The process to clear the cache on Android is really simple, although it depends on the version of Android you have, with these differentiated steps:
- On Android 9 and later: go to mobile settings, then Applicationsenter each of the applications and click on Empty the cache. You can also find optimization options in this regard by going directly to Storage and enter the section Applications.
- On Android 8 and earlier (up to Android 4.2): go to device settings, go to Storagethen to Cached Data and click the button Accept to clear the temporary files registry.
If all this doesn’t help, you’ll have no choice but to proceed with deleting apps or data that might be important. Although it might not be that dramatic.
At this point, there is not much left for you to do to optimize your phone space without deleting apps, photos, or other files that may be important to you. Now, these are ultimately the most effective ways to free up space, so it wouldn’t hurt to use them if what I mentioned in this article wasn’t enough for you.
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