There are times your Android phone runs out of space and yet you either cannot expand your phone storage (iPhone users) or your SD card is already full. What do you do in such situations? It really nags when you cannot install that new app you saw on your friend’s phone last night, not even downloading that new mp3 hit. No worries anyway, I am going to show you how to free memory space on your Android phone.
It’s easy to free memory space from your android phone; in fact, I will be showing you more than five ways to do it. You can clear hundreds of useless data to create more space on your phone. Rooting out offline maps and documents, clearing caches, and wiping unneeded music and video files are some ways you can free memory space in android phones as we shall be seeing.
Delete all cached app data
Cached data is simply app data. The most used app on your phone, say WhatsApp, Twitter, or Facebook shall have larger cached files than apps you rarely use. Once you navigate to your phone’s Apps storage setting, you will notice that each app has its own cached data.
The total cached data of all your apps may be so large and take up lots of megabytes or even gigabytes depending on the number of active applications and how frequently you use these apps. Cached data is normally not useful; they are just junk files that can be safely deleted. Tap the Clear Cache button to take out the trash. If you want to clear all cached data at once, go to Settings > Storage > Cached data, then tap OK in the confirmation window.
Delete useless files from your Downloads folder
All modern Smartphones automatically prompt you to delete or clear junk files on the go immediately you are done with installing the app. Android devices have a Download folder where miscellaneous junk files downloaded from the Web are kept. Tap and hold a file in the Downloads folder and then tap the Trash button to delete it.
Open your phone’s file manager and click Downloads to view all available folders and files. Tap the three-line menu icon in the top corner of the screen to sort the list of downloads by size and then take a look at all files that take appear in the top. If you see anything you don’t need, tap and hold the file to select it, and then tap the Trash button.
Delete all photos you already backed up
There is no need of keeping a photo in your phone gallery yet it is already backed up with Google’s Photos app. This app has the ability to back up your entire photo library to your online Google account. It’s then okay to delete all local photo files since you created a backup on one of the most secure backup storage platforms. You can access all backed-up photo files anytime you want.
Erase offline areas in Google Maps
Every phone with the latest version of the Google Maps app downloads maps which you, later on, used to navigate when your device is offline. Have you ever wondered why you can search up a place in your google maps or even drive following the directions on your phone even when your device is offline? However, these offline searchable areas come at an expense of storage space, sometimes it’s a lot of space used up by these offline map files. Delete these files whenever you feel you will not need them anymore, perhaps the Google maps app will still download it again when it’s needed.
Purchase a new SD card
Apart from iPhone users, all other Android users are lucky that every Android phone you can buy has a slot for expandable storage. This gives you a chance to double or triple the space on your phone. You can get a micro SD card from Samsung or SanDisk in at least 32GB capacity. Prices per gigabyte decrease substantially as the capacity increases, so you should buy the biggest card that you can afford. The best way you will free up space on your android devices Is by expanding your phone storage with an SD card.
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Resort to Google Drive
Google offers 15 gigabytes of free cloud storage for everyone who opens up an account with them. This can be a very good way of how to free memory space on your Android phone. Like we said earlier on, anything inside your Downloads or Files app can be backed up to your Google Drive by tapping the menu button in the top right corner and choosing “Send to…” This will open the share sheet, where you can select Save to Drive to choose which folder to add it to. After this, do not forget to delete everything from your phone.
Turn on smart storage
Android operating systems such as Oreo include functionality that automates the smart storage process without needing you to do anything. Flip it on, and your phone will automatically clear out all items that tend to fill out your phone storage space such as photos, memes, and videos. When you automate it, smart storage shall remove all backed up media after 30, 60, or 90 days eliminating any duplication that may cause your phone to be stuffed. Those are some ways of how to free memory space on your Android phone.