How can I clear my phone of various files? Formatting the external memory of the device. Clearing the cache partition via Recovery mode

Freeing up memory on Android is not such a difficult task if you do it right. And this article is designed to teach you exactly that.

Before deleting something from the device, it is necessary to audit what is stored in the device and how much memory each element occupies. To do this, go to the “Settings” section, then “Device memory”. Here you can see detailed statistics on how much memory space is occupied by applications, pictures, audio, video downloads and other components.

By clicking on each element you can go to the screen for managing these elements. For example, by clicking on the “Photo” section, you will be taken to your photo gallery.

Note that if you click on "clear device cache" this will free up memory on Android, but it may slow down your apps a little as they have to retrieve that cache data again. In addition, clearing the cache may lead to the fact that in some of your applications you will have to re-enter your username and password to enter them.

It is also worth noting that if you manually moved music or video files to other directories, Android will count them in the “Advanced” column.

If you have an SD card in your smartphone or tablet, then in the same section you can also view the data located on it.

Now that we have studied what our memory is clogged with, it’s time to move on to freeing it

2. Managing your applications

Look at the application icons on the desktops of your devices and honestly answer the question of how many of them you use regularly. Surely there are some that haven’t opened for several months. It's time to delete them to free up Android memory.

If you cannot decide which of the installed applications can and should be removed, go to the settings section and select “Applications” or “Application Manager”. Select "Downloaded".

Here you can see a list of applications that you have recently downloaded, as well as how much memory space they occupy. This will help you make an informed decision about which applications can be safely removed.

Start with the apps you no longer use, look at the largest apps that take up a lot of space, and consider whether you need them. To remove an application, simply click on its name and then the “Delete” button.

Please note that some of the applications you will not be able to uninstall due to the fact that they are built into Android or the software of the smartphone or tablet manufacturer. But if you select the “All” tab and click on any of such applications, you will find a “Force Stop” button there, then that application will no longer run and waste Android memory. In addition, you can remove updates for these applications, which will also relieve the device memory.

It also makes sense to transfer some applications to an SD card, however, unfortunately, not all Android devices support this function. In addition, if you format the SD card, your applications on it will become unavailable.

3. Clean up your photos

Review your photos in the gallery and make sure that there are no random or unnecessary ones. You know, photographs of the floor, ceiling and sky are of little artistic value. In addition, the necessary photos can be placed on an SD card, your computer, or, finally, on one of the cloud services, for example, Dropbox or Picasa.

4. Stream music and movies

If you have a really large music library, you don't necessarily need to store it on your device. Services like Google Play Music and Amazon Music can store a large amount of music files and stream it to you whenever you want.

Five full-length films in HD quality can take up 15 gigabytes or more of memory. A dozen 1-2 minute videos you shoot will add a couple more gigabytes to this. So it is not practical to store all this on your gadget.

If you purchased a movie using Google Play or Amazon, then they can always be found in the cloud services of these companies. Don’t forget about services where you can watch videos online, without having to download them to your tablet or smartphone.

5. Cloud services

We have already mentioned cloud services for streaming music, videos and storing photos, but we will name a few more such services.

For example, Google Drive is an obvious choice for Android users, making collaboration very convenient.

Google Drive along with Google Play, Google Music and other Google services like Gmail and Google Docs give you 15 GB of storage space to store your data.

Many Android devices have very little internal memory. On sale you can still find budget smartphones and tablets with 4 gigabytes of internal memory, of which, at best, 3 gigabytes are available to the user, the rest is occupied by Android itself.

Naturally, working with such an Android device is not very convenient. After all, you will constantly need to install applications and perform other tasks. In this article we will talk about how to clear internal memory on Android and at least partially solve this problem.

Step No. 1. Transfer applications to a memory card.

The best way to start cleaning internal memory on Android is with. This procedure can be performed on any Android device with operating system version 2.2 or higher. To do this, you need to open the settings and go to the “Application Manager” or simply “Applications” section.

After this, you will see a list of all installed applications. Find the application that is taking up a lot of space on your internal memory and open it.

After this, a window with the properties of the selected application will open. Here you need to click on the “To SD memory card” button.

After clicking this button, the Android operating system will automatically transfer the application you selected from the internal memory to the memory card. This will free up some free space in the internal memory.

It should be noted that transferring an application is not always possible. If the transfer button is missing or inactive, then this application is not transferred. In this case, you need to find another application that can be transferred to a memory card.

You can also do it here if you no longer use it. To do this, click on the “Delete” button instead of the “To memory card” button.

Step #2: Remove junk using the SD maid app.

The application allows you to analyze the internal memory and SD card and find junk files that remain after deleting old applications.

In order to remove garbage, launch this application and click on the “Update” button opposite the “Trash” item.

After this, the application will analyze the internal memory and SD card. After the analysis is completed, information about the number of files found and their size will appear in the “Trash” section. In my case, the program found 14 files totaling 874 megabytes (see screenshot below). In order to delete these files, you need to click on the “Cleanup” button, which is located at the bottom of the screen.

Step #3: Transfer user files from internal memory to MicroSD card.

The next stage of cleaning the internal memory is transferring user data. For this you will need a good file manager. For example you can use . Launch this file manager and go to the “Device” (internal memory) section.

After that, examine the folders that are there. If you find your files (photos, music, videos, documents), then transfer them to the memory card. This can be done using the same file manager.

Particular attention should be removed to such folders as: Bluetooth, DCIM, Documents, Download, Movies, Music, Pictures, Sounds. As a rule, many files accumulate in these folders that can be easily transferred to a memory card.

One of the weak points of the Android OS is considered to be system memory, especially if the technical characteristics of the device exclude the possibility of adding it. The situation is further complicated by the fact that over time all sorts of installation modules and files accumulate, which significantly affects the speed of the gadget. Therefore, many users are starting to wonder - how to free up system memory on Android?

There are several effective methods, which will be discussed in this guide.

Modern phones (tablets) have system (built-in) memory and additional memory cards. And, if (if there is nothing valuable on it), then with system memory everything is a little more complicated.

Cleaning via built-in conductor

Memory full? You can use a special conductor that is in the device itself (the name may vary in different devices):

Open the utility, select the category that needs cleaning. These could be applications or documents, archives or images, videos or music. At the top, find the pencil image (edit) and click on it:

The contents of the folder of the selected category will appear in the window that opens; mark unnecessary files. Delete them by clicking on the trash can icon:

Cleaning with Clean Master

The next method is to use the Clean Master utility, which is considered one of the most popular, significantly speeding up the operation of mobile devices. Applications running on the device not only eat up memory, but also battery power. The new task killer implemented in the program will be able to terminate unwanted applications, which will free up a significant amount of memory and increase the speed of the device. You won't need superuser rights, but if you have them, the task killer will function better.

The operating algorithm is quite simple:

Launch Clean Master - a window with two circles opens, where the larger one characterizes the system memory, and the smaller one characterizes the RAM:

Select “Memory” (maybe “Device” or something else) - the scanning process starts. As a result of the check, it becomes clear what exactly will help free up memory.

A table opens where you need to select those files that can be deleted or compressed, confirm their deletion by clicking on “Save”:

The cleaning process may take some time, after which the “Space Free” message will pop up.

Cleaning using Task Manager

You can clear memory using the built-in task manager:

• Go to the “Settings” menu.
• Select the “Applications” submenu.
• Clear memory by selecting a utility (one or more applications) and clicking “Uninstall”.

Transferring apps to an SD card

There are situations when memory has disappeared somewhere, although the user has not yet installed anything. This can be explained:

• the presence of viruses - you will have to run an extraordinary (thorough) scan with one of the many antiviruses;
• updating previously installed programs that take up more and more free space.

If the problem with viruses disappears, then you need to configure the storage (memory on Android). Simply put, any application can be transferred to a memory card. The main thing is to follow these steps:

• Enter the “Settings” menu.
• Click on the program (icon) you want to move.
• Transfer it to the memory card by selecting the appropriate button.

Unfortunately, this method is only suitable for those programs that are not system ones.

Saving data to external storage

Among the installed applications, there will probably be those that save data received from the network on the device. The simplest example is e-readers and online players. To prevent the internal memory of your phone (tablet) from becoming full, you need to configure them in such a way that all data is written to an external card.

Using cloud services

The modern user has no need to store information on Android that may never be useful. You need to remember only what is important at the moment. All other data can be safely uploaded to cloud storage, where they will wait in the wings.

As you can see from our material, even not the most advanced user can optimize his “Andryukha”. Well, for clarity of the procedure - video

One of the problems with Android tablets and phones is the lack of internal memory, especially on “budget” models with 8, 16 or 32 GB of internal storage: this amount of memory is very quickly consumed by applications, music, captured photos and videos, and other files. A common result of a deficiency is a message that There is not enough space in the device memory when installing another application or game, during updates and in other situations.

This guide for beginners details ways to clear the internal memory on an Android device and additional tips that can help you less often run out of storage space.

Built-in storage settings

The latest current versions of Android contain built-in tools that allow you to assess what is occupied by the internal memory and take measures to clean it.

The steps to assess what is occupied by internal memory and plan what to do to free up space are as follows:

1. Go to Settings - Storage and USB drives.

2. Click on the “Internal storage” item.

3. After a short period of counting, you will see exactly what is occupied by the space in the internal memory.

4. By clicking on the item “ Applications» you will be taken to a list of applications sorted by the amount of space they occupy.

5. By clicking on the items “ Images», « Video», « Audio» The built-in Android file manager will open, displaying the corresponding file type.

6. When you press " Other» The same file manager will open and display the folders and files in the internal memory of Android.

7. Also in the storage and USB storage settings at the bottom you can see the item “ Cache data» and information about the place they occupy. Clicking on this item will clear the cache of all applications at once (in most cases this is completely safe).

Further cleaning steps will depend on what exactly is taking up space on your Android device.

For applications, by going to the list of applications (as in step 4 above), you can select an application, estimate how much space the application itself takes up, and how much is its cache and data. Then click " Erase cache" And " Erase data" (or " Place management", and then - " Delete all data") to clean up this data if it is not critical and takes up a lot of space. Please note that deleting the cache is usually completely safe, and deleting data is also safe, but may require you to log back into the application (if login is required) or delete your game saves.

• For photos, videos, audio and other files in the built-in file manager, you can select them with a long press and then delete them, or copy them to another location (for example, to an SD card) and delete them after that. Please be aware that deleting some folders may cause some third-party applications to not work. I recommend paying special attention to the Downloads folder, DCIM (contains your photos and videos), Pictures (contains screenshots).

Analyzing the contents of internal memory on Android using third-party utilities

Just like for Windows, there are applications for Android that allow you to find out what exactly is taking up space in the internal memory of your phone or tablet.

One of these applications, free, with a good reputation and from a Russian developer, is DiskUsage, which can be downloaded from.

1. After launching the application, if you have both internal memory and a memory card, you will be asked to select a drive, and for some reason in my case, when selecting Storage, the memory card opens (used as removable, not internal memory), and when choosing " Memory card» opens the internal memory.

2. In the application you will see data about what exactly is taking up space in the device’s memory.

3. For example, when you select an application in the Apps section (they will be sorted by the amount of space they occupy), you will see how much the apk application file itself, data and its cache take up.

4. You can delete some folders (not related to applications) directly in the program - click on the menu button and select “ Delete" Be careful when deleting, as some folders may be needed for applications to function.

There are other applications for analyzing the contents of Android internal memory, for example, ES Disk Analizer (though they require a strange set of permissions), " Disks, Storage and SD Cards"(everything is fine here, temporary files are shown that are difficult to identify manually).

There are also utilities for automatically cleaning guaranteed unnecessary files from Android memory - there are thousands of such utilities in the Play Store and not all of them are trustworthy. Of the tested ones, I personally can recommend Norton Clean for novice users - permissions only require access to files, and this program will definitely not delete anything critical (on the other hand, it deletes everything that can be deleted manually in the Android settings ).

Using a memory card as internal memory

If your device is running Android 6, 7, or 8, you can use a memory card as internal storage, with some limitations.

In addition to the described methods for cleaning internal memory, we can recommend the following things:

Enable synchronization of photos with Google Photos; in addition, photos up to 16 MP and 1080p videos are stored without restrictions on location (you can enable synchronization in the Google account settings or in the Photos application). If you wish, you can use other cloud storage services, for example, OneDrive.

• Do not store music on your device that you have not listened to for a long time (by the way, you can upload it to Play Music).
• If you don't trust cloud storage, then sometimes just transfer the contents of the folder DCIM to your computer (this folder contains your photos and videos).

Modern mobile devices are equipped with an impressive amount of internal memory, which can reach 64 GB or more. This space is sufficient for most users to perform everyday tasks. However, if your gadget does not boast a capacitive drive, sooner or later you will face a lack of free space on your device. In this case, it will not be superfluous to know how to clean your Android phone of unnecessary files and applications.

Ways to clean your smartphone from unnecessary information

Starting with Android 4.4, the developers of this OS have removed the ability to install applications on an external memory card. Thanks to this, many owners of mobile devices began to experience a shortage of free space and look for different ways to free it up.

There are several ways to clean Android from unnecessary files and programs:

Manually erasing unnecessary files

The most accessible and easy-to-use method of getting rid of unnecessary data is manual cleaning of Android. It consists of searching internal and external storage for files and programs that you do not use, and then erasing them.

The most convenient way to clean your phone of unnecessary files is through the explorer installed on your smartphone. This could be File Manager, ES Explorer, Total Commander or any other software with similar functionality. The procedure will be as follows:

If ES Explorer is used as a cleaner, then manually deleted unnecessary files will not disappear without a trace, but will be transferred to a backup area called the Recycle Bin. To completely erase them, you need to clean it too.

If, after cleaning the gadget from rarely used files, little free space has increased on the drive, you can additionally get rid of unnecessary software:

This cleaning method is only suitable for third-party applications. There is no virtual Delete key in the properties of the preinstalled (built into the system) software. Before uninstalling such programs, you will need to unlock root access on your device.

When considering how to clean Android of junk, it should be noted that one of the places with a large volume of unnecessary files is the Download folder. Therefore, it is recommended to visit it first.

Clearing the system cache

Another place where garbage likes to accumulate is cache. It stores temporary files, as well as “snapshots” of previously deleted applications. One of the most effective cache clearing utilities is SD Maid. It works like this:

Deeper cache clearing can be done via . To do this, you need to enter Recovery mode by turning off the phone and holding down a certain combination of mechanical keys, and select the wipe cache partition tool. After rebooting the phone, the cache will be completely clear.

Transferring installed programs to an external card

If the memory of your device contains only the necessary information, that is, you cannot delete anything from it, you can free up free space by transferring the installed software to an external card. Modern smartphones and tablets do not have this feature. However, this shortcoming can be corrected.