We all get excited at the prospect of using new devices, especially a new smartphone with larger storage. However, this joy is at times short-lived as we have to deal with the Not Enough Storage or in other smartphone models ‘Storage Almost Full’ notifications which can be annoying at times.
How do you deal with the ‘Not Enough Storage’ notification without having to change your smartphone? Let us consider useful tips which will show you how to manage your storage on different devices.
Tip 1: Uninstalling Unused Applications
Your device is able to show you which applications have been dormant for large periods of time. It is common to find a smartphone user with a lot of applications installed but only uses five of these regularly.
In order to find out which applications are dormant, head to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications.
Tip 2: Clear Phone Cache
Cache space can also be a huge factor that contributes to low storage space issues. Most applications store data locally on the devices they are installed. This is the main reason why an app could be 500MB in size but with the extra data, it ends up consuming 1GB of storage space.
Here is how to clear your cache:
Go to Settings > Apps > Select an App of your choice > Select the Storage & Cache button > Next Select the Clear Cache option.
Tip 3: Install a Cleaner/ Storage Management Application
The Appstore or if you are an android user, the Play store has tons of cleaner apps that are intended to help you manage your storage. Such applications will assist you in cleaning your smartphone’s RAM, and cache, removing duplicate files, removing unused files, and help you reclaim more space.
Tip 4: Consider deleting Files
Many a time, we end up downloading files, music, and pictures which may end up accumulating a lot of space on our devices. It is advisable to go over the Gallery app, Music app, and Files app to check and delete files you are no longer using.
Before deleting any file, it is useful to do a backup of the same file to another storage device such as a hard drive, or consider backing the file to the cloud. Ensuring you do backups helps you not delete files you might use in the future which are currently not being used.
At the moment, the only solution appears to be deleting files that are taking a lot of space on your device. Here are some more Apps you can check:
1. The Messaging Apps
Most messaging apps may have settings that allow you to download media automatically. Apps such as Telegram and WhatsApp usually have such settings ticked during initial downloads. It is useful to always uncheck this option.
To do this for WhatsApp: Head over to Settings > Storage and data > Media auto-download
For the Telegram app: Head over to Settings > Data and Storage > Proceed to unselect the three options under the Automatic Media Download Section.
It is also worth noting that chats also end up ‘eating’ into your storage. Therefore once again head over to WhatsApp or Telegram, go to those groups which have tones of unread messages and proceed into the group settings and select the clear chats function.
To do this for WhatsApp: Select a group of your choice you intend to clear > Tap the More option > More > Clear Chat >
For the Telegram app: Select a channel or chat, tap More > Clear History > Auto-delete Messages in chat
In order to delete files and media which were downloaded from either of these applications, you can also head into the Files application > Android > Media > com.whatsapp > WhatsApp> Media
2. Image or Gallery Apps
Most of the downloaded Images can appear in these applications. It is possible to transfer this to another storage location or opt into backing these media files into cloud storage and then delete them from your smartphone in order to make more storage available on your smartphone.
3. Video Apps
As is the case with Image Applications, Video Applications can also be a good point from where you can delete those videos which you no longer require on your phone.
