Are you running out of storage on your smartphone or tablet—with no memory left for photos or videos, new apps, or data for your existing apps? If you want to free up some space, then following these 5 tips for managing your storage space can help your device performance.
1. Move to the online storage
This is one of the most important item in the list that will have more impact on your storage space than any other because photos and videos tends to take a large amount of space on mobile devices.
There's no doubt that we all love snapping pictures on your phone or taking countless selfies, but there’s only so much weight that your internal storage can pull. Add to that are the photos and videos you constantly download from WhatsApp, Facebook or the web, leaving no room for your device internal memory. But you can limit this problem by making use of online cloud storage services such as Google Photos or Google Drive.
Google Photos
Google has offered an automatic backup feature as a way to make it easier for us, and it is one of the best options available in ensuring that you keep all your important stuffs fully backed up. It's called Google Photos. With it you can store countless amounts of photos and videos for free, but your images will be resized down to a maximum of 16 megapixels and your movies down to 1080p full HD, so no chance for 4k. But if you do want to store your files in full resolution, you'll have to pay for the service.
Once your files are backed up, Google Photos can then delete the images from your device. You can still have access to your files from any device on which you are logged into your Google account. Moreover, Google Photos work across, not just Android, but iOS, Windows, macOS, and the web.
Google Drive
Though Google Photos is very useful, it only accepts photos and videos. So another option will be Google Drive. It can help you back up large amounts of documents along with photos and videos directly to your Google Drive account and access them online from any device. Since you're using a phone that runs on a Google-owned operating system, it makes sense to make use of Google's cloud-storage tools, too.
There are other cloud storage services though such as Dropbox, Microsoft's OneDrive, and Amazon Photos. They'll offer a certain amount of storage space to save your files to the web for free with an option to upgrade to a larger storage for a few dollars a month.
2. Add an expandable storage
Not everyone though will want to keep all their files online, they may still want to keep some offline for easy access. If the same is true of you, then you will need to expand your device storage space.
Many Android phones now comes with a memory card slot. If your device has one, then go get a microSD card and insert it to your device. You can find some that have a capacity of 32GB-128GB. Now that's enough room to store your data. When you move your files to the memory card, there will be enough room in your phone's internal memory for it to function properly.
But not everyone's device has the benefit of an expandable storage. But good thing, there are other ways to add storage to Android.
You can easily attach a microSD card to make use of a microSD card reader. This connects to your phone's Micro-USB port. Or you can connect over OTG (On The Go), which allows you to plug in a MicroSD adapter or a regular USB flash drive or a wireless hard drive directly to your phone just as you would with a PC so that you can transfer your data physically to the external storage device. But you need to ensure that your device supports OTG before using an OTG adapter.
3. Get rid of apps and games you no longer use
After photos and videos, apps and games tend to be the next space hoggers. We all have dozens of apps and games that we install, use a couple of times, and then forget about. If you don't want to run out of space, then you should regularly get rid of apps and games you no longer or you rarely use.
To do this, go Settings, then tap on Storage, and then tap Apps. Here you will find which app is taking most space. Delete the worst ones by tapping on the app, and then tap on the uninstalled button at the top.
You can also access the apps and games you downloaded on Google Play. Go to Play's Settings and tap on "My apps & games", then select the installed tab. Tap on the app or game you want to delete, then choose Uninstall.
Don't worry about apps you paid for you can always re-download them later without paying a second time for Google will keep track of what your purchase.
Apart from the apps that you have installed, there are certain apps that comes with the phone you bought. These apps are normally called bloatware that have been dumped on you by your device manufacturer and most of them are hardly any use to the mainstream user except to just eat up space. Yet they can't be deleted unless you root your device.
But if you aren't keen of getting rid of the bloatware by rooting your Android device, then disabling them will be your next best option. Just go over to Settings, scroll down to Apps, then select any of the bloatware app and tap “Disable” to render it useless. Do the same for the others.
4. Delete unnecessary WhatsApp media
Though it's easy now to prevent WhatsApp from automatically downloading pictures and videos to your device, that's is not enough to stop it from still clogging up your storage space.
Have you thought about all the media you sent over the service? Want to know what become of them after they are sent? At first you may think they are deleted since you are not able to view them from the Gallery. I suggest that you open a file browser app, such as File Manager or ES File Explorer (or you can download a free one from Play Store), and navigate to your device's Internal storage > WhatsApp > Media > WhatsApp Images or Video > Sent.
You may be surprised by what you find there, so get rid of what you don't need.
5. Reset your phone
If you have only a tiny amount of internal storage and you're getting the "insufficient storage" message when you try to update or download an app, and you have already followed all the above suggestions, then your best bet will be to perform a factory reset and start afresh.
Well not many people are willing to go through this process since it will return your handset to the condition it was in when you first bought it—which means that all your photos, videos, messages, apps, and everything else will be wiped out of your phone except what the manufacturer and Google have pre-installed.
But you don't have to worry if all files are on a cloud storage like Google Drive or Dropbox, all your photos and videos are on Google Photos, all your emails are on Gmail, all your music are on Spotify, and you have have backed up and downloaded all your messages and contacts.
There you have the 5 ways you can free up space on your Android device. By following the suggestions on freeing up room on your handset, you will be able to improve its performance. And next time, please be more careful with your phone's storage space. Thanks!
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