One of the major challenges that most of the Android handset users face today is about managing the internal storage within their handset. Sometimes, the fast filling of internal storage takes places due to unwanted reasons like creating of cache files, auto downloads over apps that occupy extra MBs of data which we don’t need and similar other ones.
Moreover, with devices having lower internal storage, it becomes a real struggle to micromanage the storage. Topping up the internal storage might effect the phone’s response getting slower over the period of time.
Let us take a look at few of the simple steps that will help you manage the space within your Android handset in an effective manner.
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CHECK YOUR ANDROID SMARTPHONE BUILT-IN STORAGE
One of the first things that we request you to do is just go through the storage options in your Settings Menu of your smartphone. Here, the Android OS will show the storage pane giving you precise idea about which section is consuming what amount of internal storage in your device. The Internal Storage is divided into sections like Apps, Images, Video, audio, Cache Data and Others.
So to begin with, at the first we request you to have an internal check and delete all the unwanted images, videos that are occupying extra space in your handset.
Also have an internal check for all the apps you have installed and delete the ones that you have used only once and no more require.
Considering the apps section in a bit more detail, note that the occupied space for an apps consist of several things like the apk file, its data, cache and other things in all.
For example if you saved many videos in “offline” from Youtube, this might add up to the overall space occupied by the app in addition to its apk file itself. Any other app that caches data in a similar way, will occupy space like this.
As shown in the above image, the size of Google Play Music is large wherein data occupies most of portion. Here you have an separate option to clear the cache data as well. Like this, you can select each app from the Apps list and manage data for each individual app.
ADDING SD-CARD AND MOVING DATA AND APPS THERE
If your phone has an additional micro-SD card slot, this is one of the most essential and easiest ways to increase storage and give some oxygen to your phone’s internal storage. One of the foremost things to be done once you insert the microSD card slot is transferring all the heavy files for music, images and videos to the SD card. Today there are a lot of storage capacity options available for micro-SD cards which you can select as per your requirement.
One of the good features that comes with the Android OS is the ability to move your apps to microSD cards. For this click on each individual apps within the Apps List. Note that the system apps won’t be able to move to SD card and will be stored within the internal storage only. Check for other apps that you install from the Play Store. For apps that can be moved, you will see an option like “Move to SD Card” clicking which most of the app data will move to SD card and ease up space in your internal storage.
USE THIRD-PARTY APPS TO CHECK THE FOLDERS OCCUPYING MAXIMUM SPACE
In order to determine the exact amount of data used by your different folders saved within your smartphone, download some of the third-party apps like DiskUsage from the Google Play Store.
Then scan you device file system and get an idea about which files and folders are using the maximum space. It might happen that there might be a existing data folder for an particular app which you have happen to delete it.
Select this folder here, click on the Menu dotted icon on the top-right and select the Delete option further.
We request you to be careful while using this option as you might end up loosing some important files relating to other apps.
MOVING DATA TO CLOUD
This is one of the excellent ways to keep your phone storage free. With high-end smartphones, the images taken from your high-end cameras are often big in size and occupy more space. A good and convenient option is to directly upload the images to cloud network. There are several apps that support this feature like Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Photos, and others. Google Photos is integrated with your existing Gallery storage and won’t require a different signing in. Moreover you also get unlimited storage space in Google Photos, and you can access them anytime from the Photos app or from any other computer by visiting photos.google.com.
Similarly, just what your do with your images, you can upload some large music files to your Google Play Music account and stream it back to your device over a good internet connection. This way, you can hear only selected files you want from the uploaded collection rather than having the entire collection to occupy your mobile space.
We expect that all these tips might come pretty handy to you. Feel free to shoot us a message anytime in case of query 🙂
