How to Free up Storage space on your phone

Make more room for your data

Don't panic, if you're not ready to buy a new phone and your phone doesn't have a handy microSD slot for some extra storage, you can probably still pick up a decent amount of free space with some simple house cleaning. Here are some suggestions on how to get back some of that storage.

Use Android's "Free up space" Tool

Android has a built in tool to help you increase the amount of useable storage on your phone. It's easy to find

- Go to your phone's settings and select "Storage" among other things, you'll see information on how much space is in use.

- Tap on the blue "Free up space " button

- You'll be given the choice of using Google's files app ( if it's installed) or built in remove items feature. The latter gives you the opportunity to clean out your photos and videos (If they're backed up) your downloaded files, and your infrequently used apps.

There are other handy tools in the "Storage " selection you could use, for example, you can find out how much space each of your apps takes up.

- In "Storage" tap on a category (Such as Music & Audio or games) You'll get a list of all your apps that fit that category, along with how much space each app is taking.

- Tap on the app name, You can now find out the app size, how much of the available storage is being used by user data, and how much space is being used by cache. Two buttons let you either "Clear storage" or "Clear Cache".

(Note if you're unsure: it is usually safe to clear the cache. However before you hit " Clear storage" check to see what you user data is. You don't want to accidentally delete any important media files or documents.)