Running out of Android storage space? How to check and fix it

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Joe Fedewa / Instruction Geek

Go to Settings > Storage on your Android phone to view storage usage. On a Samsung Galaxy phone, go to Settings > Battery & device care > Storage. This screen shows you how much storage is being used on your phone and exactly what is taking up it: apps, system data, images, videos, audio files, etc.

When you picked up your new Android device, you probably thought it had a lot of internal storage space. But here you are, with a full phone. Fortunately, Android includes many simple tools to check your internal storage usage and free up space.

How to Check Internal Storage on Android

You can check storage on Android from the Settings app. All Android devices have a ton of things packed into the “Settings” app, including storage settings. This is where you can see how much storage space is being used and what exactly is being used, like photos, videos, apps, and more.

To find storage settings on Android, first swipe down from the top of the screen once or twice, depending on your phone, and tap the gear icon to open Settings.

On the Google Pixel and most non-Samsung Android devices, you can go directly to the “Storage” section from here.

touch the option "Storage" in Settings.

On a Samsung Galaxy device, you’ll first need to go to “Battery & Device Care,” then tap “Storage.”

Touch "Battery and device care" on the list.

Your device will analyze its storage usage. You’ll now see a reading of your internal storage, how much it’s being used, and categories of what’s taking up space.

Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel storage sections.

The categories displayed will depend on your device. For example, Google Pixel phones separate “Apps” and “Games,” while Samsung doesn’t. This is the easiest way to control the storage of your Android device.

What is the “other” Android storage?

The categories displayed in storage settings vary by device. One common category you might see is loosely labeled “Other” or “Other Files.” Unlike some categories, you generally can’t explore what’s inside “Other”. So what is it?

Samsung Galaxy devices include a category of “Other Files”. According to the company, it simply contains app data, cached data, and temporary files that don’t fall into the other categories. Essentially, it’s a mixed bag for miscellaneous stuff.

While you can’t remove items from the “Other” category in Storage settings, you can from other areas. Cached data is most likely the main thing taking up space in “Other”, and that can be cleared in other ways.

How to clear internal storage on Android

Now that you know what’s using storage space on your Android device, you can start cleaning it up. The good news is that it is very easy to find things to delete. We will use “Files by Google” which has a useful tool to free up storage space.

After installing the app from the Play Store, open it and switch to the “Clean” tab at the bottom.

Go to the tab "Clean".

There is a progress bar of how much storage space you have used at the top of the screen.

See how much storage you have.

Scroll down and you’ll see that Google has automatically suggested files that you can delete to clean up your internal storage. The “Junk Files” category is for temporary files, such as cached files for applications; tap “Clean” to remove them.

junk files.

For the other categories, you can tap “Select Files” and then choose what you want to delete.

Select files to download.

That’s pretty much it! This is a great app to check on regularly if you want to keep your storage space clean and tidy.

How to free up space on Android

To free up space on your Android phone or tablet, the “Files by Google” app is a good place to start, and it may be all you need, but there are several other methods you can use to clean up storage space on your Android. device.

Some of the best ways to free up storage space on Android include deleting downloads, clearing the cache, emptying the trash, uninstalling apps you no longer use, and moving content to cloud storage. You can even use an SD card for more storage. Check out our detailed guide for more ways to free up space on Android for more information.

Hopefully, your Android device has enough storage that you’re not constantly trying to free up space. If that’s not the case, make sure your next Android phone has more storage. As we’ve covered, there are plenty of ways to maximize the space you have, but there’s no substitute for more storage.

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