If you don’t have enough storage on Android, you might have trouble with the performance, camera, or games. You’ll need to leave at least some space on your Android’s storage for apps and services to work. It’s easy to uninstall apps to free up space, but you might need those apps sometimes, and downloading them from the Google Play Store every time is not convenient. Instead of deleting apps, you can free up space on Android by using the tips below.
You can also connect your Android phone to a desktop and move media files to free up space. But it’s not practical and takes a lot of time. Here are some ways to free up space on your Android without touching apps that are already installed.
Free Up Space on Android Without Deleting Apps
1. FIND AND REMOVE LARGE MEDIA FILES
The phone’s gallery app lets you remove large videos by hand. But it might take a while to find these files on your phone and delete them. Google has a cool Files app that can find big files on a phone by itself. Let’s see how it works.
Step 1: Download the Files app from the Google Play Store.
Step 2: Open the Files app and give it the required storage permission.
Step 3: The app will scan the phone storage to find screenshots and large files.
Step 4: You can select and remove them from your phone in no time.
2. DELETE DOWNLOADS FROM STREAMING APPS
The above trick only works for files on your phone. Files can’t find apps like Netflix, Spotify, or YouTube that have offline content and delete it. If you have downloaded music albums on Spotify or an entire TV season on Netflix, they might take a big chunk of storage space on your phone. It’s time to clear storage space from these apps without uninstalling them.
Step 1: Open Settings on your Android phone.
Step 2: Scroll to Apps.
Step 3: Check the installed apps list with storage space.
Step 4: Page down to Netflix (or any other app that takes more space). Check out the screen below as an example. Netflix takes up almost 8GB of space..
Step 5: Select the app to open the info menu.
Step 6: Scroll to Storage.
Step 7: Tap Clear data.
You can also open the respective app and remove offline content from the Downloads menu.
3. CLEAR CACHE FOR FREQUENTLY USED APPS
Cache are small files of data that apps store on your phone to make them work better. Some apps build up a crazy amount of cache over time, which takes up more space on your phone. To clear an app’s cache, follow the steps below.
Step 1: Long-tap on an app and open the info menu.
Step 2: Open Storage.
Step 3: Select Clear cache.
Repeat the same steps for other apps on your phone.
4. TRY LITE APPS
On the Android platform, developers like Facebook and Microsoft have made lite apps. You can use lite apps if Messenger, Outlook, Facebook, etc. take up too much space on your phone.
Lite apps are made for Android phones with less storage space and are easier to use. You might miss out on some features or have trouble with how the faces move, but they do the job.
5. USE CLOUD STORAGE
If you subscribe to Google One or Microsoft 365 (everyone who pays for Microsoft 365 gets 1TB of OneDrive storage), you can use cloud storage to free up space on your phone.
You can move photos and videos from your phone to Google Drive or OneDrive and then delete them from your phone. That will free up space on your phone, and you can always get to those photos and videos on other devices.
6. FREE UP STORAGE FROM GOOGLE PHOTOS
Most Android users back up their media files with Google Photos. The app has a tool that makes it easy to delete photos and videos that you have backed up from your phone. Just do what’s written below.
Step 1: Open Google Photos app on your Android phone.
Step 2: Tap on your profile picture in the top right corner.
Step 3: Select Free up space.
Step 4: Check the amount of space you can free on your phone.
Utilize the same menu to remove backed-up data on your phone.
7. CHECK STORAGE MANAGER
OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) like Samsung and Xiaomi come with a storage manager that lets you free up space without having to delete apps. Here’s how to put it to use.
Note: We will take Samsung Galaxy phone running One UI 4.1 based on Android 12 as an example.
Step 1: Open Settings on your Samsung Galaxy phone.
Step 2: Scroll to Battery and device care.
Step 3: Open the Storage menu.
Step 4: You can check your phone’s Recycle Bin, duplicate and large files to remove them.
USE DEVICE STORAGE SMARTLY
You can also change the settings for video recording from 4K to Full HD to save space. If you use the above tips, you should be able to get back between 10GB and 15GB of space on your Android phone. If you have an iPhone and have the same storage problems, read our post on how to free up space on your iPhone without deleting apps.