Strategies for Freeing Up Storage Space on Android Devices

1. Introduction to Storage Space Management on Android

Keep in mind this information: the more clutter, the lower the performance. The Android operating system does offer a few tools that let you track storage space usage and clear cache or remove unwanted items taking up space on your device. If you've run into an insufficient disk space message, then you should start to think of managing your storage before you run into bigger headaches with your Android device. The following suggestions are part of a series detailing the steps you could take to free up more storage space on your Android device.

Storage space management on Android smartphones and tablets is crucial for maintaining an optimal performance of the Android device. Many of the performance issues on an Android device often stem from running low on storage space, thus hampering your device's ability to operate efficiently. By freeing up more space on your Android device, you'll be able to install or save any additional files and other media contents without error messages. In addition, this ensures that the device runs more smoothly, enhances battery life, and allows for available operating system updates to perform effectively and effortlessly.

Introduction

2. Identifying Storage-Hogging Apps and Files

As we mentioned, the storage section in your phone will provide you with a visual model of your storage configuration. You can see what items are taking up space on your phone, including multimedia files, apps, and other files that are placed on your phone. Each program can be clicked on individually after you have identified it and receive an explanation on how the space is being used. Choose the app instead and you will see the percentage of space the applications are taking up. Then tap the large apps that show up to delete.

The first step to deleting unwanted files in order to clear up storage space on your phone is to simply identify which files are using the space. Start by going to your settings and selecting storage, which will provide you with a visual representation of what is consuming your space. After choosing 'storage' on the options on using Android 10, you can view 'Free up space', and you can manage your storage through this option without having to go far.

3. Optimizing System Settings and Utilizing Built-in Tools

2. Transfer and delete files. Typically, we install an app to create a file. Over time, we'll have a lot of those said files. We may use an app to no longer need the file and the app, but forget to delete the unwanted files, and our device will become quite the file hoarder. This is especially true if we're fond of downloading videos. We'll often forget to delete them. Regardless of the files, applications, or other multimedia content we download, the trash will also need clearing. For convenience, we can connect the phone to the computer and directly delete the unnecessary files and folders from the internal storage and the SD card via the Windows Explorer.

1. Uninstall unwanted apps and clear cache. The applications we have installed eat up a huge chunk of storage space, so if we aren't using an app, it's best to simply uninstall it. There are apps pre-installed by the system that we'll never use. This situation is really common, as we'll install antiviruses, media players, and a host of other applications. We almost never use the apps bundled with the device, and the more we have, the more update and notification info we'll receive, and these apps will also eat up a huge chunk of system resources. We can delete these pre-installed yet unused apps. Such applications often have system privilege and we can't remove them via normal means.

4. Utilizing Third-Party Apps for Storage Space Management

Droid Optimizer, for example, cleans a smartphone's cache, logs, and temporary files to a brief appearance. Similarly, History Eraser offers to clear the browsing history, call logs, text messages, search history, and clipboard data. By cleaning up this commonly cluttered information, users can free up space on their device. The App 2 SD App Manager and AParted Partition Manager is particularly helpful for the task of managing the apps installed on an Android phone by being able to move a number of apps to a device's SD card. Once set up, several apps that once lived in the internal storage can be moved to the SD card on a temporary basis, effectively doubling the raw internal storage capacity of the phone. By removing these apps from the internal storage, a large amount of space is freed up, allowing a user to install even more apps than one would usually find necessary. The DiskUsage app showcases the space a specific file and folder is consuming in a visual space, making it easier for smartphone owners to find and remove large files that take up significantly large amounts of internal storage. With the applications mentioned above, Android phone users can effectively manage the disk space on their Android devices without any issues.

The aforementioned methods are already built into the Android OS to help users manage their storage settings. However, oftentimes these services are not enough. In these cases, users can choose to utilize several third-party apps that can improve the situational efficiency of managing Android device storage. The apps highlighted stand out for their ability to effectively manage disk space, prevent bloat, and provide users with an overall cleaner Android device experience. While there are more than one thousand recommended applications for managing Android device storage from the Google Play Store, we specifically focused on apps that have made a significant impact in the information technology field in regard to improving storage space on devices running the Android operating system.

5. Best Practices for Maintaining Adequate Storage Space on Android

Based on our experiences with analyzing users' device storage space, the major usage patterns of Android device storage space can be classified into the four cases depicted in Figure 5. The "document file" case has a local file storage usage pattern that is gradually accelerated over time. The "document file" case includes standard storage overload situations such as photos and videos are storage heavy, re-installation of apps, storing too much music, and other document file cases. Users can easily recognize the growing need for storage space used on each device as the device continues to run out of storage space.

Based on the inherent characteristics of the Android device and the typical usage patterns of the average consumer, a significant number of apps are installed onto every device. Dozens of apps can be found on many devices, and some even exceed two hundred apps. These apps also occupy a huge amount of storage space. These apps also need to store temporary files, cache, and other files on the device. In 2014, apps used an average of 70MB storage space if you include the installation package and cache, with a range of 23MB to 143MB. Users install many apps into their devices and not give them another thought. In reality, these apps actually use a lot of storage space. Users only become aware of the need to free up space when an "Insufficient Storage Available" or similar notification is displayed, and even then, users try to free up space by uninstalling or clearing the cache of only a few apps.