How to free up space on your android phone

Many of us have had this problem with our android phones. Whether it was a 16GB or 32GB or even more, at some point you will get the message ‘Insufficient storage on your device” while probably attempting to download yet another app, video, music or other files.

There are several ways to get around low storage problems on your android phone. The first and the easiest way, is get a microSD card with adoptable storage. Prior to fixing one, you should find out what type of cards your phone accepts. Most phone manufacturers will include the information on the specification or reviews of that device. Many budget phones will accept only 32GB while higher-end devices typically handle 128GB.

When your phone accepts or ‘adopts’ the space available on the microSD card it becomes part of the phone’s storage system, rather than just adding a separate pool of available storage. Once you have the card fixed, move some of the storage-sucking apps there if they can be moved. Take note, some apps are unmoveable.

If you are still battling with the ‘Insufficient storage” message, the next thing to do is uninstall old or unused apps. Everyone has some apps they downloaded that are seldom used as frequent as they do other apps. Your phone or tablet probably came with a couple of these apps and you have since added more that you never use. If you do not use much of the apps you downloaded, it is best to uninstall them. Later when you eventually have use for them then download them. Even the apps you want to keep can be taking up more space than they require. Over time every app on your phone fills space with cached files.

A cached file is a file of data on a local hard drive. When downloaded data are temporarily stored on the user’s local disk or on a local network disk, it speeds up retrieval the next time the user wants that same data from the internet or other remote source. Freeing up your app cache can also help to solve problems with misbehaving apps.

It is important to note that not every app on a device can be uninstalled or deleted. Phone makers can decide which apps to pre-install on a phone or tablet and might not allow you to completely remove some things. If you try to delete an app and it simply says ‘disable’ not ‘uninstall’ it means you cannot remove it.

However, if you chose to ‘disable’ it, it will remain on your phone still taking up space but will not be allowed to run and take up system resources. The app is essentially left inactive but can be enabled again should you want to use it.

You can also store your files on cloud storage to free up the space. There are cloud storage apps like Dropbox, Google Photo, Google Drive etc which automatically back up all your photos to the storage site, or you can upload only those you want to store online. Once they are in the Cloud you can delete them from your phone or tablet. However to access those files in the Cloud you must always have internet connection.

FRANK ELEANYA