How to free up space on Android phones

Whether you’re in the front row seeing your favorite band, you’re sitting courtside seeing your team advance to the finals, or you’re just on vacation seeing family you haven’t seen in years, the one thing you don’t want to see… is a low storage alert when you’re trying to capture these moments with your Android phone camera. This blog will show you how to free up space on Android phones, so you’ll be ready when this happens. But first, we’ll cover how your Android phone storage works and how to stay ahead of it, to keep this from happening at the worst possible time. If your team is down by 1 with 15 seconds left in OT, it’s not the ideal time to be uninstalling apps, you know?

Understanding Android phone storage

Android phones have two types of storage: internal and external. Internal storage is built into the phone itself (usually at 64GB, 128GB or 256GB), and can only be modified by having whatever is in it removed. External storage can be expanded via memory cards or the cloud. Think of internal storage as the trunk of a car, while external storage is a trailer you can attach to the back, and the cloud is kind of like your garage (where you store stuff you don’t think you’ll need anytime soon, but still want access to, just in case). Internal storage is limited and tends to fill up quickly, especially if you have a lot of apps and take a lot of HD photos or videos. You can’t expand internal storage, you can only add external storage.

Knowing these limitations can help you decide what to keep on your phone, what to move to an SD card or the cloud and what to delete. What tends to take up the most internal storage space on a phone is apps. The more advanced the app and the more features it boasts, the more space it’s going to take up on your phone. Additionally, apps utilize background app refresh and store their own data in their own caches, which affects your phone’s internal storage as well. 

How to check your storage on Android phones

Keeping up with your phone storage is important for maintaining peak performance and avoiding storage alerts at the least opportune times. Here’s how you can check what your phone storage looks like currently:

• Go into your phone’s Settings
• Select Device Care and tap Storage
  • Note: These steps may vary slightly depending on your Android make & model

From here you can see what percentage of your internal storage is available as well as a detailed list of all the things taking up storage space on your phone (apps, videos, photos, documents, etc).

How to delete photos and videos from Android phones

Photos and videos can add up very quickly in your phone. Take a moment to scroll back and eliminate the ones you don’t need, like duplicate selfies, that blurry photo of where you parked back in April 2019 and that screenshot of a shipping notification for the shoes you’re wearing right now.

• Go into your phone’s Gallery
• Tap on the photo or video you’d like to delete to open it
  • You can also long-press on one photo to select it, then tap on multiple photos if you want to delete several at once
• Tap Delete (the trash can icon) 

Deleting photos & videos from your Gallery moves them to the trash folder, where they’ll be deleted for good after 30 days. If you know you definitely don’t want any of these photos or videos back, you can manually empty the trash early to free up more space. 

How to uninstall apps on Android phones

Look at how many apps you have on your Android phone, then think about how many of them you actually open on a regular basis. Apps take up a lot of space on your phone, so if you can bring yourself to say goodbye to a few of them, deleting some will free up some valuable storage. Maybe start with that restaurant app you downloaded two years ago to get a free entree. 

• Go into your phone’s Settings
• Select Apps
• Tap on the app you’d like to uninstall
• Tap Uninstall (the trash can icon) 

Note: You can also long-press on the app from your home screen and tap App info (the i icon) as a shortcut.

Free up storage using the files app

The Files app (or My Files) will show you all files currently stored on your phone. You can delete photos & videos from here, but you can also delete audio files (like ringtones you don’t use anymore) and documents, too.

Clear out your Junk Files

While you’re here, we recommend you delete any temporary app files under “Junk Files.” These mostly consist of leftover data from app installs, updates or cached files from browsing the web and can take up a lot of space over time.

• Go into the Files app
• Tap on the menu icon and select Clean
• Scroll down to Junk Files and select Clean
• Tap Clear

Delete old downloads

When they’re not on your home screen, it’s easy to forget how many PDFs you’ve downloaded just to read once and never open again. Whether it’s old concert tickets, instructions for building a credenza or that cookie recipe you’ve memorized by now, there are likely a few old downloads you won’t miss taking up space in your phone.  

• Go into the Files app
• Tap on the file you’d like to delete to open it
  • You can also long-press on one file to select it, then tap on multiple files to delete several at once
• Tap Delete (the trash can icon) 

How to clear app caches on Android phones

The apps on your phone also accumulate cached data over time, which can take up a good amount of storage space. 

• Go into your phone’s Settings
• Select Apps
• Tap on the app whose cache you’d like to clear
• Select Storage 
• Tap Clear Cache

Clearing the cache won’t erase any vital data or log you out of an app, it just eliminates temporary app data to free up some internal storage.

Free up internal storage by using external storage

Got a lot of family photos you don’t necessarily need on your phone but also don’t want to delete? Maybe a 5-minute HD video of your sister getting engaged on the lake? For the larger files that you don’t need access to at all times but still want to hang on to, you can purchase an external hard drive or SD card to move those files to, or utilize a cloud storage option like Google One. There are different options available depending on your phone make & model, so shop around and choose the one that makes the most sense for you. 

Thanks for the (phone) memory

Once you’ve successfully freed up some internal storage on your phone, you should notice increased performance and efficiency. At Mint Mobile, we’re all about simplicity and efficiency, so we also have articles on how to organize apps on your phone and other tips to optimize your Android phone (in case it’s still lagging a bit). And now that you have room for new apps, consider adding Mint Mobile service to that Android phone. We’re not just about saving you storage space, we really like saving you money too.