Android smartphones and tablets can fill up quickly when you download apps, add media files like music and movies, and cache data for offline use. Many low-end devices may only include a few gigabytes of storage, which makes it even more problematic and find best ideas for free up space in android device.
Here you can find top 5 ways to free up space on your android device:
Use Android’s built-in storage tool
Android 8.0 Oreo
Android 7.0 Nougat and earlier versions
See which folders and files take up the most space with Go files
Adding an SD card and moving data to it
Move apps to the SD card
Move photos to the cloud
The less space you have, the more time you will have to devote to micro-managing internal storage. If you regularly run out of space and need to manage it, consider getting a phone or tablet with more storage next time.
Use Android’s built-in storage tool
Modern versions of Android have a storage pane that will show you exactly what is taking storage on your device. To find it, open the Settings screen and tap Storage. You can see how much space is used by apps and their data, pictures and videos, audio files, downloads, cached data, and various other files. The thing is, it works a little differently depending on which version of Android you’re using.
Android 8.0 Oreo
Google has taken a fundamentally different approach with Oreo than previous versions of Android by breaking down the Storage menu into a more granular list.
When the list has been grouped by apps and different file types in Nougat and below (which we’ll talk about below), Oreo does things a little differently by groups and files as well as by category. For example, when you open the “Photos & Videos” option, it not only shows you which photos and videos are taking up space on your phone, but also any related apps like photo or video editors.
Not all apps will fall into the predefined categories, so there is a kind of overflow for everything else called “Other Apps”. Likewise, there is a “Files” option which lists all the files that do not fall into another category.
Now, all of that said, there’s actually an absurdly easy way to free up space in Oreo without having to dig through every menu entry: the big “Free Up Space” button at the top. Tap on it.
This will essentially show a list of downloads on your device, along with any photos and videos that have ever been backed up (this is just a simple verification option, not a full list), and any “infrequently used apps” where applicable. Choose what you want to remove and ottoman – free space in the house.
If that doesn’t clear up enough for you, however, it’s time to dig into each option manually. Pay close attention to apps and the amount of data they store. For example, apps like Google Play Music (or other music streaming apps) can store a lot of data while it’s streaming. Erase that to save yourself a ton of space.
Android 7.0 Nougat and earlier versions
Once you’re in the Storage menu in any version of Android running Oreo, just tap an option to see exactly what is using space and delete it. For example, you can tap Apps to view a list of apps using the most space and remove them. Tap on downloads to display your list of downloads where you can delete files and tap on 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 don’t want.
When dealing with apps, keep in mind that the app itself, its data, and its cache are in addition to the total space used by the app. For example, if Spotify is installed and you have cached a lot of music offline, Spotify might use more than 1 GB of space. You can clear Spotify’s cache to forcefully remove all of this, or launch the Spotify app and tell it to cache less data for offline listening. Any application that caches data for offline use will work like this. In the screenshot below, Google Play Music is only 40.66MB, but it stores 2.24GB of music in cache.
You can see how much space an app is using for these data files and clear cached data for an individual app by tapping on it in the apps list, accessed by tapping Apps in the storage pane or tapping Apps on the main Settings screen.
See which folders and files take up the most space with Go files
Android’s built-in tool is useful for viewing the space used by different types of data, but not the exact amount of space used by individual folders and files. For this you will need a new app called Files Go from Google. It’s free in the Play Store , so go ahead and download it. You will need to grant storage permissions and access to the app when you turn it on, so run it to access the main part of the app.
The main interface will show you some really interesting things right out of the door: unused apps (if you have any), low-res files, duplicate files, temp files, downloads, and files that take a lot of time. square. It’s super intuitive and lets you quickly locate apps and files that are literally wasted space.
Tap any of the category cards to view the content for that category, allowing you to choose what you want to remove. Even the Temporary Files option lets you see which apps are keeping the data, letting you delete them individually.
But wait, there’s more: tapping the “Files” option at the bottom will allow you to peek at your storage in a more categorized view, very similar to Android devices running Nougat or higher. This is great for anyone running Oreo who prefers the old storage layout.
Tap each option to view a more granular breakdown of its content. For example, the Images entry will show you everything in that folder including screenshots, downloads, etc. You can also choose to sort the results by name, date and size. I recommend the latter as you are trying to free up space.
Adding an SD card and moving data to it
Many Android devices still come with microSD card slots, although they are becoming less and less common. If your phone or tablet has a microSD card slot, you can purchase a microSD card and insert it into your device to gain more storage. The storage you gain can contain music, videos, pictures, and other media files, and in some cases even apps (see next section). Some apps may also allow you to move their cache locations to the SD card.
After installing the SD card, format it as portable or internal storage (if your phone has Android 6.0 Marshmallow), then connect your device to your computer and move your music, media and other files to the free space of the SD card.
Move apps to the SD card
Depending on your phone and the version of Android, you can also move apps to the SD card to free up space.
Android Marshmallow and above users can do this by formatting the SD card as internal storage. Then the SD card will be considered as local storage on this device. The system will determine which apps make the most sense to switch to SD card, then go ahead and move them. You can’t distinguish between real internal storage and an SD card formatted for internal use, so now there is a way to manually move individual apps. (You will also no longer be able to move the SD card between devices unless you erase and reformat it.)
If you are running a version of Android earlier than Marshmallow, you can move some apps using Android’s built-in features, or move any app by rooting your phone and partitioning your SD card.
Move photos to the cloud
Photos can take up a lot of space on a modern smartphone. Rather than storing them all on your phone, you can use an app that automatically uploads the photos you take to an online account like Google Photos, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Flickr, or whatever. Google Photos is integrated with the “Photos” application on your Android device and offers unlimited photo storage. You can access it from the Photos app or at photos.google.com on any computer.
However you do this, you can then use the Photos app on your device to delete the copies of the photos stored on your device itself, potentially freeing up gigabytes of space. You can also copy these photos to your computer and save them the old fashioned way too. The best part about using this method is that you can still access all of your photos through the Photos app, whether they’re stored locally or in the cloud. It’s transparent (and shiny).
If you don’t like Google Photos, you can also do this with other apps, like Dropbox.
The same trick might work with other files taking up a lot of space on your device. For example, you can upload a large collection of music to a service like Google Play Music and stream it to your device over an internet connection, caching the files you need instead of storing your entire collection on the phone
