Is your Phone Storage Always Full? Here are Some Ways to Fix That

Few things are more frustrating than needing to download an app to take a video and then see that “Storage is Full” notifications. After that, you’ll delete a few photos or random videos you didn’t know you had and try again, only for your storage to fill up again pretty soon after. If your phone storage is always full, then try the below to see if it helps.

Delete Unwanted Media

You’ve probably tried this already and had to decide which memories aren’t important enough to keep, or deleted swathes of useless screenshots you took impulsively – No? Just me?

Either way, deleting media is always the first option, and you should do it before anything. Consider deleting all unwanted media not just from your gallery but from your apps as well. Downloaded Spotify songs and or podcasts, YouTube videos you haven’t listened to in a while, or the notes from last semester’s class. Check your downloads to make sure you are not holding any huge files that you don’t use anymore.

Empty your Email

If you have been using the same email for over a decade you likely have thousands of unread emails, unwanted emails, spam, and unsent drafts. Purge them from your phone storage. Do this cleanse every so often, but also consider unsubscribing from mailing lists and websites that don’t serve you anymore.

Freeze those Auto-Downloads

This is an annoying one. Some social media apps may automatically download any media that somebody sends you, and users are usually unaware.  For instance, if your phone’s settings permit it, it will immediately download any videos that are provided to you via WhatsApp and store them in your gallery. The “Media Visibility” setting should be disabled to prevent this.

Other apps may display this setting differently. For instance, to prevent Facebook Messenger from automatically saving any images you take using the app, you’ll need to turn off the “Save on capture” feature. Disabling these features on all your apps will give you better control over the media on your phone and will keep your phone storage from filling up on its own.

Undeletable Apps

As you have probably tried deleting apps that you have never thought of using before, those ones that are downloaded to your phone automatically, you will find that some of them are undeletable. You can however minimize the amount of phone storage taken by these apps by disabling them.

If the app cannot be uninstalled, then you can try disabling it to it stops running in the background. Disabling an app stops it from updating automatically, which is another good way to avoid nasty “Storage Full” notifications.

Clear your Cache

This is a big one and should probably have been mentioned at the top. The purpose of a cache is to store all your past data to be retrieved if you need them. This can undoubtedly accumulate.

To clear an app’s cache you have to navigate to its settings and click “Clear browsing data”, “Clear history”, or “Clear Cache”.

Any browser, including Google, Firefox, Safari, and others, may help you clean the cache on your phone.

Having tried all of these options, you may want to just dump all your data onto a computer or external hard drive, or cloud, and then factory reset your computer once you are sure that everything you want to keep is stored away.