“I’ve made a huge mistake“. When I was buying a secondary Android phone, I went with the 8 GB Moto G model. 8 GB will be more than enough I said to myself, it’s not my main device anyway. I was so wrong. Out of the 8 gigs, only 5 GB are usable. When you use many apps (for testing) and some media, that’s not a lot.
How to clean unwanted storage items or apps from phone: Using 'Smart Doctor' application a user can remove unwanted apps or data from the phone. This will help to free some space from the phone by deleting some temp files, app cache etc. Go to your phone’s settings, and select “Storage.” Among other things, you’ll see information on how much space is in use, a link to a tool called “Smart Storage” (more on that later), and a list. “In Android, go to Settings, then Apps or Applications. You'll see how much space your apps are using. Tap on any app then tap Storage. Tap 'Clear storage' and 'Clear cache' for any apps that are. It becomes the first thing we reach out for. However, it doesn't take long for a new Samsung phone or tablet to get cluttered up with rolls of pictures, redundant apps, unused widgets, cached files and the troublingly vague 'Misc' data. It takes up increasingly internal storage day by day and slows down your phone.
It got so bad that this one time when I was trying to download a storage space analyzer app, I got an error saying I didn’t have enough space left. Oh, the irony.
But in the end I was able to persevere. Using a combination of different apps (yes, yes, adding insult to the injury), uninstalling apps, clearing caches, and being ruthless about downloaded files, I was able to clear more than 1 GB of data in a matter of minutes. To me, that’s a lot.
Read on to find out how I did it. And how you can too.
1. Look Up Storage in Settings
First, go to Settings -> Storage and take a look at what’s taking up so much space. Is it apps, photos, or videos? Tap on an option to see the complete list. Although, deleting files from here is not possible for some reason.
More importantly, tap the Misc option. This lists all the extra files left from apps you uninstalled, old backup files, or any other file type. I found over 1 GB of data taken up by such miscellaneous files. Deleting the old ROM backups, ROM images, and more was an easy way to free the space.
2. Analyze Storage Using Disk Usage & Storage Analyzer
Sometimes a visual representation of data helps. That’s where Disk Usage & Storage Analyzer comes in. Once the app scans your storage, it will show you a breakdown of your entire storage directory, folder by folder.
It displays this using a branched circle structure. You can use the Directory tab to go deeper into the folders. Tapping a folder/file brings up the Delete option.
3. Clean Cache and Temp Files
If you’re a fan of RSS readers or offline reading apps, app caches can build up pretty fast. I’m talking about a couple hundred MBs here. You can either go to Settings -> Apps, choose the app and clear the cache manually or you can use a cleaner app.
When it comes to cleaner apps, you can either use Clean Master or CCleaner (our review here), Clean Master being the choice of Android veterans.
When you launch Clean Master, you’ll see a Junk Files option. This will include system cache, app caches, system junk files, residual files from old apps and more. You can select what you want to delete. It freed nearly 300 MB using this feature. Not bad for literally 15 seconds of work. As caches build up with time, you’ll have to do this cleaning at set intervals.
4. Upload Photos to Dropbox and Delete Local Copies
Dropbox’s Carousel app has a “Free up phone space” feature (available in Settings) that deletes local copies of photos that are already backed up to Dropbox.
They can be accessed from the Carousel app anytime. Carousel will show thumbnails of all the photos. Tapping them will give you a larger preview. You can save photos from here to local storage as well.
If you want to do this manually, you can. Choose your cloud photo backup service of choice. Upload, then delete the local copies.
5. Do a Manual Sweep with ES File Explorer
There’s nothing better than just having a look around. Grab a full-featured file manager like ES File Explorer and start hunting. Explore the folders from top down. You’re bound to find files and folders taking up unnecessary space.
6. Use the Old Fashioned Way: Delete Via PC
If you’re looking for an easier way to manage/delete data from your phone that’s possibly the most reliable way, connect it to a PC. This will list your internal storage as well as external SD card. Browse around, rearrange, and delete anything you don’t need.
7. Batch Uninstall Apps
We’ve talked about the best ways to batch uninstall apps, including Titanium Backup for rooted users. But you can use a cleaner app like Clean Master to uninstall apps as well.
Apps like Facebook and Instagram can take up more than 100 MB of space (not to mention significant battery power). You can consider deleting them and using the website instead.
8. Do a Factory Reset
We’re talking about taking extreme measures here, but if necessary, you could just do a factory reset and start over fresh. Make sure all your personal data is backed up (to the cloud preferably) before you do this.
How Do You Free Up Storage Space?
What’s your workflow for getting rid of unwanted apps, photos, and files? Let us know in the comments below.
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.
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If you are planning to sell your Android phone to someone, you will want to make sure that all your data is wiped clean. Deleting the files manually from the phone is not the right solution. You need to make sure that every bit of data is unrecoverable. Let's have a look at different methods to erase data from your Android phone.
Method 1: How to Wipe Android Phone from PC (Simple Delete)
As we know, when an Android phone is connected to a computer, you can explore the files on the phone via file explorer. In there, you can copy, paste, cut or delete selected files on the phone. For unimportant ones like tmp/junk/cache data, this is the best way to clear the cell phone. However, a simple deletion does not make the data disappear permanently, which means the deleted files are still recoverable. So if you are not planning to sell the phone or you simply need to free up more storage, this method is a quite good option to fix the issue. You can delete the files one by one on your phone or follow these steps:
Step 1. Connect your Android phone to the computer with a USB cable.
Step 2. Wait for a few seconds for the computer to detect the phone.
Step 3. The internal storage and SD card will appear as external drives on your computer. For instance, if you have Windows computer, you can go to 'Computer' (or 'My Computer' for XP and earlier versions.) You will see a phone icon. Double click it to see the storage listed as drives.
Remember that this method doesn't work for some sort of data such as contacts, text messages or call history because they are stored in database. As a result, you can't see them from the file explorer. Moreover, it could turn your phone into brick if you did it inproperly. That is the reason why we lists other solutions in this article. Please keep reading!
Method 2: How to Erase Android Phone & Tablet Remotely
How about the phone was lost or stolen and you want to erase all data from it? This happens frequently in our daily life and in such a case, we definitely hope the private data on the phone being wiped cleanly. Is there a way to do that? The answer is a big Yes. Google has embeded a service called Android Devcie Manager on all portable devices powered by Android. Once you turned it on, then you can erase Android phone remotely to protect your privacy not being seen by others.
Step 1. Go to 'Find my device' page: https://android.com/find
Step 2. Input Gmail address and password. Please make sure the account is the same being used on your Android phone.
Step 3. You will see the device location on the map once logged in. Click on it and there are several options you can choose from.
Step 4. Click 'Erase' button on the pop-up window. This will remove all data on the phone remotely.
Method 3: How to Completely Erase Everything on Android Phone before Selling
If you were going to sell your old Android phone, it is very crucial to make sure all the private data being wiped completely from the device. Also don't rely on simple deletion button and factory reset, deleted data just means forgetting the 'address' of the data in question, so the data themselves still exists on somewhere in the memory.
Here we highly recommend using TunesBro Android Eraser to permanently wipe everything from Android phone or tablet. This Android data erasing program uses military standard algorithms to destroy the data completely. Everything that on your Android phone is totally removed and rendered. There is no way to recover a single byte of data from the device. You can also use this software to clean deleted data or third-party data generated by Facebook, Twitter, Skype, WhatsApp or Kik.
Step 1Install TunesBro Android Eraser on a Computer and Connect Your Android Phone
Please click one of the above buttons to save the installation file on a computer. Then follow the intructions to install it. Now, open TunesBro Android Eraser and connect Android phone to computer with USB cable.
Step 2Install TunesBro App on Android Phone
If everything goes right, the screen will display a brief information about the phone, such as model name, storage. A few seconds later, an app will be installed on your phone, please grant all the permissions it asks.
Note: If the phoen can't be detected by the program, please make sure USB debugging is enabled and trust the computer on the phone. If the problem still exists, please reinstall Android USB driver for the phone.
Step 3Scan All Data on Android and Start Erasing Data
How To Erase Internal Storage
Click 'Erase All Data' tab from the top memu bar and click 'Erase' button to let the program fully scan all private data on the phone. The scanning process will take around 6 minutes, please keep the phone well connected. After that, click' Erase' button and tap 'Erase' to confirm the operation. After that, all data on the phone will be wiped out completely.
Verdict
There are a few ways to remove the data from your Android phone. Simple delete, however, is something you must not go for, especially when you need to give the phone to someone else. Factory reset is safer but not the ultimate solution. Use Android Eraser to remove everything from your Android phone and have the peace of mind that it will never be recovered.
Does performing a hard reset actually guarantee that your information is gone for good? The answer is 'NO', it didn't actually delete all of the data from your phone and still remain. There are many professional Android data recovery can easily recover them. Another big problem with this method is that even if you encrypt the data, an expert may be able to break the code and steal your information.
How To Clear Internal Storage On Iphone
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