Lack of memory is one of the most common problems on mobile devices, and even devices with large storage volumes are not immune from it. If the smartphone “out of the box” impresses with its performance and does not complain about the lack of space, then over the course of operation, the system begins to inform the user that the memory is full. Then, in order to install any software, download a file, take a photo, video or perform other actions, you have to delete something. Moreover, the problem arises not only when the memory is full, it happens that in reality there is free space.
Clearing memory on Android is performed in various ways manually and using special utilities – for maximum efficiency, you should use several methods.
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How to view statistics on the memory load of a smartphone or tablet
Before cleaning, you should evaluate the memory load, for which:
- Go to the device settings.
- Here we go to the “Memory” tab to see the workload of the operative storage. If you need to know how much space is consumed by the software, select “Memory usage by applications”.
- In the “Storage” section (depending on the firmware, it may be called differently, for example, “Storage and USB-drives”, “Memory and backups”, etc.), you can see information about the distribution of space occupied by different types of data.
- The “Memory” section may not be present on a particular device, but you can see which applications are using RAM and how much space is occupied by them at the moment by going to the “Applications” section in the settings, to the “In operation” tab (“Working”, can be called by -other). An alternative way to see the amount of space occupied on an Android device, and at the same time free up space, is to use special cleaning software, such as Clean Master.
How to clear memory manually
You can manually clean the ROM using the standard explorer, which opens access to the device’s file system. Let’s see how to clear memory on Android using it:
- We open the explorer.
- Here data will be available sorted by categories (video data, photos, music, documents, downloads, etc.), in the local storage you can go through the folders and delete unnecessary objects.
- To delete a file, click on it and hold it for a couple of seconds (the action menu will appear at the bottom, you can mark a few more items along the way) – select the “Delete” option. To move from the action menu, select “Move” – SD-card. Then select the folder where you want to move the object, and click “Move Here”.
One of the main reasons why there is not enough memory on the device is the automatic saving of numerous data by instant messengers right on the device. Communication programs save videos, photos, postcards, other files and even avatars of other users sent to you, which takes up a lot of space on your smartphone. If you do not periodically clean these folders, the information saved by instant messengers reaches a serious scale and is calculated in gigabytes.
Numerous photos and videos taken with a smartphone camera also take up a lot of space, so you should go through the gallery and delete unnecessary ones, you can also move content that takes up a decent amount of internal memory to an SD card or to a cloud service.
How to clean memory on Samsung
Many Android models already have a junk cleaning tool to free up precious space, so you can do without downloading third-party software.
Let’s consider how to clean the memory using the built-in system tool using the example of Samsung brand devices, for this:
- Go to the settings and go to the “Optimization” section.
- Select the “Memory” item at the bottom of the screen and wait for the system to scan the device, after which the “Clear” button with information about the released volume will be available.
The methods used for other Android devices are also suitable for devices of the Samsung brand.
How to remove garbage in the browser
The browser’s temporary storage contains the data of the pages you have visited and other information, which makes them load quickly on subsequent visits. But over time, the cache begins to grow and the numerous elements that are its contents only clog up memory and slow down the operation of the browser, moreover, a clogged cache and outdated elements in it can prevent the pages from being displayed correctly and cause errors. So, clearing Android memory necessarily means clearing the browser cache.
This can be done in the browser menu:
- Google Chrome. Go to the menu (three dots), go to the “History” – “Clear history” section and choose which temporary data you want to get rid of (cache, cookies, history), and also indicate for what period.
- Mozilla Firefox. From the menu (three dots at the bottom) go to the settings – “Privacy and security” – “Delete web surfing data”. Here we indicate what exactly we are deleting and press the corresponding button.
- Yandex browser. Through the menu (three dots), go to the settings, in the “Privacy” section, select “Clear data”, mark what to delete and press the clear button.
- Opera (including Opera Mini). Click the Opera icon on the bottom panel – Settings (gear icon), in the “Privacy” subsection, select the option to clear the list of visits, note that we will delete and click “Clear data”.
- Vivaldi. Click on the program icon at the top right, go to the settings – “Privacy” – “Personal data” – “Clear history”. We mark what to delete and delete by pressing the button.
Application cache
The cache, filled to capacity, can be deleted both in the program itself and in the device settings or by uninstalling and reinstalling the software if the software does not support the built-in functionality.
- To remove the application cache using the system:
- In the settings go to the “Applications” – “All applications” section.
- On the “All” tab, select the required software from the list, a page with information about the application will open, some actions are also available here.
- Click “Clear cache” in the “Cache” block.
- If you click in the “Memory” – “Erase data” block, the program will return to the state it has just installed on the smartphone (all user settings will be reset).
To delete the cache of all programs in bulk:
- We select the item “Storage” in the settings (it can be called differently).
- We press “Cache data” and in the “Clear cache” window select “OK”. On different Android firmware, the menus and actions are different, for example, in the storage section there may be an item “Clean up garbage”, when you click on which, the system will analyze the memory, identifying unnecessary caches and other garbage, after which you can select and delete data.
Deleting Messages
Active communication of the user through the exchange of messages (the most weighty are SMS with attachments, as well as emoticons, etc.), especially when the phone is not the first year, also takes up a lot of device memory.
It is worth deleting old SMS, MMS, as well as messages in instant messengers that are not important. Before cleaning, you can save the necessary photos or videos sent in messages (messengers create folders for attached files).
Removing applications
To free up memory on your Android phone or tablet, you should analyze the software on the device’s desktop and remove unused software. Another method involves removing programs in the device’s settings (section “Applications”). If you have root rights, you can also uninstall preinstalled software that you don’t need.
Deleting files
You can delete files manually through the built-in Explorer (see above) or using a third-party application for working with the file system, for example, “ES Explorer”. Using the file manager, you can delete both internal storage files and external storage (from an SD card), ES Explorer also works with cloud services. All unnecessary files will be sent to the trash, from where they can then be deleted or restored if something was deleted by mistake.
How to clear memory using programs
If your Android phone does not have enough memory, you can use one of the cleaning programs that can free up space on your device by removing junk files. They are present in sufficient quantities on Google Play, so there will be no problems with finding and installing the necessary software.
Clean master
The most popular Android optimization app that will save the day if your phone memory is full. The paid version does not contain ads, has a cleaning planner and assumes a VPN connection, but for effective cleaning, the free utility option is sufficient.
Let’s take a step-by-step look at how to free up smartphone memory using Clean Master:
- We launch the application.
- We press “Clean” or select “Trash”.
- After scanning, we indicate what needs to be removed and click the “Clean up trash” button.
- The item “Phone acceleration” allows you to free up RAM.
The utility also includes antivirus, power saving and smartphone cooling capabilities.
SD Maid
The free version of this application will be enough for many users, SD Maid allows you to remove residual files of deleted programs, the paid version of the program also includes a cleaning scheduler, clearing the cache and duplicate files. Working with the program is simple:
Launch, click “Scan” (the first time you start, you need to grant some permissions).
At the end of the scan, select and delete unnecessary data.
SD Maid
App Cache Cleaner
An easy-to-use utility (like Clean Master), while including advanced cleaning of messengers, for which you need to select the desired item and the cleaner will clean the application folders by itself. Among the capabilities of the software there is also a search for duplicate photos.
App Cache Cleaner
How to clean a phone via a computer (via USB)
Cleaning your smartphone using a computer involves using a USB cable (micro USB or Type C) through which you need to connect devices. Further actions are just as simple:
- We allow data transfer via USB on the phone.
- On the computer, open “This Computer” (“My Computer”, depending on the version of Windows).
- We go to the folder with the name of the mobile device and select the internal storage.
- By analogy with the phone explorer, folders with files that can be deleted will be displayed here.
The above methods (in particular, the use of several at once) allow you to effectively perform the task of freeing the user and RAM of the device. If we talk about extreme measures taken in case of system malfunctions, then getting rid of errors and at the same time clearing the memory will allow resetting to factory settings.
After the procedure, all information uploaded by the user (except for the data on the SD card) will be deleted from the smartphone, so it is recommended to make a backup copy first.