Free Up Internal Storage Memory on Android Devices

Edited by Leomar Umpad, Eng, Dougie, Nuance and 1 other

8 Parts: Ways to Free Up Internal Memory Space on Your Android Device External Memory Card Move Multi-Media Files From Your Phone's Internal Memory Card To Your External Memory Clear the Cache on Your Phone
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Have a problem with your Android's internal memory? Always getting an "insufficient memory" message or constantly having pop ups that say, "phone storage is full, delete some files" on your phone or Tablet? Help is on the way. Whether you are have the Galaxy Note3 with the massive 64GB internal memory or have Galaxy Y's memory of about 200MB, the reality is, there will always come a time where you will not have enough memory on your Android phone. There are different ways of addressing this problem, and all of these will be discussed in this article.

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Ways to Free Up Internal Memory Space on Your Android Device

There are generally four basic ways of freeing up the memory of your phone. Each of these will be expanded into different sections

  1. 1
    USING AN EXTERNAL MEMORY CARD.
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  2. 2
    CLEARING YOUR PHONE CACHE.
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  3. 3
    UNINSTALLING UNNECESSARY APPLICATIONS.
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  4. 4
    GETTING RID OF OUT-DATED AND UNUSED FILES ON YOUR PHONE.
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External Memory Card

Use an external memory card to free up internal memory on Android phones. For Android phones that support external memory cards, the least storage capacity supported is 8GB. Higher ends top the scales and support micro-SD cards of up to 64GB. A micro-SD card can store photos, videos, applications, documents and other data. With a decent memory card, a phone with a 200MB internal memory can store data up to 20 times than its internal capacity.

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Move Multi-Media Files From Your Phone's Internal Memory Card To Your External Memory

You can move your photos, music files, video files and other multi-media files from your phone's memory to a micro-SD card on your phone. To do that, follow these directions:

  1. 1
    Insert a supported micro-SD card into your phone's memory card slot.
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  • 2
    Go to your phone's file manager application
    .
    If for some reasons you can't find one on your phone, you can download Android file explorer applications such as ES File Explorer or Android File Manager.
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  • 3
    From the file explorer, go to the location where your multi-media files are located
    .
    ##Most music files are located in the Music folder.  
    1. Movie and other video files are in the Videos folder.
    2. Photos and images are located in the Camera or Photos folder.
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  • 4
    Most file explorers also offer a "Search" feature so you can also use that feature to search for multi-media files using their common extensions (.mp3, .png, .jpg, .mp4, etc.).
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  • 5
    Once you've located the multi-media files, you may now proceed to transferring them to the memory card
    .
    Different Android versions have slightly different ways of moving files.  
    1. For older Android versions, you may need to press the "Menu" key to view options to select and move files.
    2. For newer Android versions, you can select the file you want to transfer by simply tapping on the tick options beside the file.
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  • 6
    Make sure that you choose "Transfer", "Move" or "Cut"
    .
    Do not choose "Copy" as copying will retain the file in its original location and move a new copy to the destination location. This will not free up space.
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  • 7
    Using the file explorer application, navigate to the location for the external memory device
    .
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  • 8
    From the location on the micro-SD card, paste the multi-media files.
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  • 9
    Wait for the transfer to complete
    .
    Depending on the total size of the files being moved, the transfer may take a few seconds to as long as few minutes.
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  • 10
    After the transfer is complete, your phone's internal memory will now have more free space
    .
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  • 11
    You can check your phone's memory status to see an increase of the free space.
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    • Use The Memory Card As The Default Download Location For Applications

    You can use the external memory storage as the default download location whenever you download files using any application. Again, procedures may slightly vary from one device to another device. The application used and the application version is also a factor for the slight variance. There is a basic pattern to change the download location for an application. Check on these procedures and adjust depending on your device and application used. For discussion purposes, we will show how it is done through the native Internet application running on Samsung Android Jelly Bean Version 4.3. You can check on the detailed article Use the Memory Card As Default Download Folder on Galaxy Phones

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    1. 1
      Go to your Home screen by tapping on the "Home" button or by tapping on the "Back" button a few times.
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    2. 2
      From the Home screen, tap on the "Apps" icon to view the applications on your device.
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    3. 3
      From the application menu, tap on the "Internet" icon to open it.
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    4. 4
      On the Internet app, tap on the "Menu" key to view available options and tap on "Settings."
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    5. 5
      From Settings, tap on "Content Settings" under "Advanced options."
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    6. 6
      On the Content Settings page, tap on "Default Storage" and choose "Memory card".
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    7. 7
      You are done setting the memory card as the default storage for downloads on the Internet application.
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    Move Applications From The Phone's Internal Memory To The SD card

    There are different ways you can move applications from your phone's internal memory to the SD card. Depending on your device and its OS version, then you may need to adjust to these steps:

    1. 1
      Go to your Home screen by tapping on the "Home" button or by tapping on the "Back" button a few times.
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    2. 2
      From the Home screen, tap on the "Apps" icon to view the applications on your device.
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    3. 3
      From the application menu, tap on the "Settings" icon to open your phone's settings.
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    4. 4
      From Settings, Go to the "Application Manager"
      .
      Some devices require you to go to "More" tab, "Other" tab or different tab. The common thing between all of them is that application manager is always on the Settings app.
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    5. 5
      From the Application Manager, you will see the list of applications installed on your phone
      .
      Most devices have different tabs for applications depending on where they are stored.
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    6. 6
      Tap on any application name to open it and tap on "Move to SD card" option to move the application to your SD card
      .
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    7. 7
      The application, along with its data and cache will now be moved to your SD card.
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    8. 8
      You will now see an improvement on your phone's internal memory space.
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    9. 9
      Take note that some applications, by default, cannot be moved to the external memory storage
      .
      These are critical applications needed by your phone to function normally. This to prevent possible problems that may be encountered once the memory card is removed or damaged.
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    Clear the Cache on Your Phone

    Clear the cache and data to free up internal memory on your Android phone and Tablet. This will release some free space on your phone's internal memory. Cache is useful as they help applications load faster. What's not so desirable about them is they tend to pile up and in a few weeks you may just find yourself running out of your precious internal memory. You need to regularly clean your cache and application data to have more space on your device. To clean cache and application data, follow the procedures below. Depending on your device and its OS version, you may need to slightly adjust the instructions to work with your phone.

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    1. 1
      Go to your Home screen by tapping on the "Home" button or by tapping on the "Back" button a few times.
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    2. 2
      From the Home screen, tap on the "Apps" icon to view the applications on your device.
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    3. 3
      From the Application Menu, tap on the "Settings" icon to open your phone's settings.
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    4. 4
      From Settings, go to the "Application Manager"
      .
      Some devices require you to go to "More" tab, "Other" tab or different tab. The common thing between all of them is that application manager is always on the Settings app.
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    5. 5
      From the Application Manager, you will see the list of applications installed on your phone
      .
      Most devices have different tabs for applications depending on where they are stored.
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    6. 6
      Tap on any application name to open it and tap on "Clear Data" and "Clear Cache" options to delete these stored cache and data on the applications.
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    7. 7
      Stored cache and data on your device are now deleted, and you will have more memory available.
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    Uninstalling Unnecessary Applications

    To free up internal memory on your Android device, uninstall applications you don't use, that are out-dated, or unnecessary. You may not realize it but there are applications on your phone that are not used anymore. You may be surprised to know the number applications on your phone that you have not used for the past few months. These idle apps eat up your internal memory space. To uninstall them, follow the procedures below. You may need to slightly adjust with the instructions to fit your device model and O.S.

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    1. 1
      Go to your Home screen by tapping on the "Home" button or by tapping on the "Back" button a few times.
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    2. 2
      Tap on the "Apps" icon on your Home screen to view the application menu.
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    3. 3
      On the Application Menu, tap on the "Settings" icon to open it.
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    4. 4
      From Settings, go to your "Application Manager".
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    5. 5
      Application Manager will show a list of all applications installed on your phone
      .
      #Tap on the application you want to uninstall and choose the "Uninstall" option on the application page.
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    6. 6
      The application is now uninstalled and you have just freed up some of your internal memory.
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    Clear Out-Dated & Unused Files From Your Phone

    Aside from applications, idle files like photos and videos may be sitting on your phone. Clean your phone from these unnecessary files. To do that, follow these suggestions:

    1. 1
      Upload your photos and videos online
      .
      There are a lot of online storage sites or social networking sites such as Facebook that allows you to upload and save photos and videos to their servers.
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    2. 2
      Delete old files that are not used
      .
      Check your phone for unused files and get rid of them.
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    3. 3
      Check for duplicate files
      .
      Some files, especially music files may be duplicated. Go through your files and remove similar files.
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    Citations:

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    Questions and Answers

    If you have problems with any of the steps in this article, please ask a question for more help, or post in the comments section below.

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    Article Info

    Categories : Android

    Recent edits by: Nuance, Dougie, Eng

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