8 Steps to Clean Up Android Phones

From time to time, we should clean up our phones to create more storage space and fasten up our mobile phones speed. This guide to clean up our Android smartphones helps you do so.

Get an overview of memory

As a first step to tidy up and better sort files on your phone, it makes sense to get an overview of the used storage space.

To do this, open the settings on your Android phone and scroll to the memory menu item. On Samsung devices, the memory can be found under battery and device maintenance. 

The menu item "Memory" already shows a short overview, it is displayed in percent how much memory is used and the exact amount of free memory in gigabytes (GB ) is also mentioned. 

In my case, 90% of the storage capacity is already occupied. On my smartphone, an older Google Pixel device, there is still 6.58 GB of free storage. So for me, it makes perfect sense to clean up my phone to have more storage space available.

If you go to the menu item "Memory" on an Android phone, you will see exactly how much memory is used and how much is available in total. To stay with my personal example, 57 GB of the total available 64 GB are currently occupied. 

In the overview, before the used storage space is divided into categories, the note appears in my case that it is possible to manage and release storage space via the Files app. More on this later. 

Delete apps

Android users were able to choose between about 3.5 million apps during the second quarter of 2022. This makes Google Play the largest app store of its kind in the world.  

A slightly older source from 2019 states that smartphone users had 95 apps installed on average in 2018. However, only 35 of the 95 apps were actually used, and the remaining 60 apps only took up unnecessary storage space. Without a doubt, the number of available apps in the Play Store will continue to increase, and the number of installed apps is certainly somewhat higher now than it was in 2018. 

I currently have 108 apps installed on my phone. However, some of these are system apps that are needed for the smartphone to function at all and cannot be deleted. 

When you click on the Android menu Settings > Storage > Apps, the apps are now displayed in descending order of size. In my case, the messenger app WhatsApp takes up the most storage space with 2.35 GB. The second largest app is the music streaming app Spotify with 2.32 GB. The third largest app on my device is the trading platform Binance with a size of 1.49 GB. Compared to these very large apps, our picture gallery 3moji only takes up around 30 MB of storage space, so 3moji can be considered a very slim photo gallery app. 

In order to delete as much storage space occupied by apps as quickly as possible, it makes sense to directly select the apps that you no longer or only very rarely use in the app list listed from large to small. In my case, the app Cubasis 3 comes into question here, this is a DAW, i.e. a software for creating music. Cubasis takes up 1.25 GB of memory, but since I paid money for this app, I will keep it. 

As a help to see which apps we really use, we can use the Google Files app. To do this, we download the app for free from the Play Store or just open the Files app on our device and select "Clean up" at the bottom of the footer. In order to create storage space very quickly and easily, the junk files should be cleaned up first. These are temporary app files that take up a lot of storage space. In Google Files under "Clean up" it is displayed how much storage space I can free up this way. For me, it is currently 0.93 GB. With just a few clicks, I am able to get almost 1 GB more storage space this way. 

Also in the Files app of Google under "Clean up" a list of unused apps is available. Clicking on the list opens it and shows when the unused app was last accessed and how much storage space it occupies. For me, the already mentioned Cubasis 3 app appears at the top of the list. If you go through the list now, you can quickly and easily delete unused apps and thus free up a lot of storage space on the phone. 

Organize images and sort screenshots

A great way to delete photo files is via Google's Files app. It independently suggests various ways to clean up pictures and screenshots. These include deleting old screenshots, the possibility of deleting large files or cleaning up blurred photos.

Another way is through our new photo gallery 3moji. One advantage of 3moji is that all picture files are sorted and can thus be found super fast via advanced search. 

The basic principle of the app is similar to selecting a favorite photo. Unlike clicking the star at the top of the detail view in Android and saving the photo as a favorite, 3moji allows you to attach up to three emojis to a photo or screenshot. 

To download 3moji app, simply click on the button featured at the bottom of this page. You choose whether you want to sort photos or screenshots and you're ready to go. In the gallery view, you can call up the multiple selection via a long press or in the three-point menu at the top. By clicking on a photo to select it, you can assign a suitable emoji to a large number of pictures. Of course, you can also call up a photo in the detailed view to assign a suitable emoji to it. To do this, click on one of the three white circles at the bottom and the emoji keyboard opens, offering a varied number of appealing emojis. This completely replaces the creation of annoying folder structures on mobile devices. 

Once you've tagged a certain number of photos or screenshots with the help of emojis and favorited them that way, you can easily and permanently delete the intervening image files that you haven't sorted with emojis from your phone. To ensure that no important photo is deleted, the app asks again before each deletion whether the selected photo or multiple photos should really be deleted. 

Remove videos

If you want to delete videos from your phone in order to have more storage space available. It makes sense to use the files app from Google. In total, the Files app already has over a billion downloads, so it is very popular. 

It makes sense to look at a video again before deleting it. Of course, this takes a bit more time compared to photos. 

Any video that is no longer used can be deleted directly via Google Files. After deletion, it will be moved to the recycle bin, where it will finally disappear from the end device only after 30 days. So, there is no need to be afraid of deleting a video by mistake, because this can be recovered with just a few clicks. 

Clean up documents 

In my opinion, there is no way around Google's Files app when it comes to documents and other files. Of course, this only applies until 3moji also supports files other than photos and screenshots. 

Again, under "Cleanup " in the Files app, there is even the option to view duplicate documents and delete them with just a few clicks. In my case, there are a lot of menus from different restaurants among the documents. It makes sense to delete all restaurant menus, if you need a single one again, you can simply re-download it. 

PDFs take up comparatively little space, so deleting documents won't really get our job of cleaning up memory space done efficiently.

Clean up audio files 

Similar to videos, we should logically listen to audio files again before deleting them. It should be noted that audios often take up comparatively little storage space, depending on their length. An interview of about half an hour, which I conducted, only takes up 28 MB on my cell phone. 

Especially pre-installed ringtones are very small, they are only in the KB range, and are therefore not relevant when it comes to creating more storage space on the phone. 

Even with audio files, you don't have to worry about accidentally deleting an audio recording, because these are also permanently deleted from the device in the recycle bin after 30 days. 

Uninstalling Android games 

When it comes to games, it is important to note that especially game scores and other progress that has been achieved in a game will be permanently lost when the respective game is deleted. 

It is therefore important to decide for each game exactly whether you can do without what you have achieved so far or whether you would like to continue playing the game from where you last left it. Any in-app purchases are also completely lost when uninstalling a game, unless the game provides a login including cloud storage. 

Empty recycle bin 

Google provides detailed instructions on how Android users can delete or restore photos and videos in its photo help.

 In case you have Backup & Sync enabled, photos and videos will even remain in the Recycle Bin for 60 days, instead of the 30 I mentioned before.

Emptying the recycle bin can only be done via the "Photos" app. To do this, we open it and go to the gallery at the bottom of the footer. We can access the recycle bin at the top right under the manage button. 

In the recycle bin, you can either delete individual photos, delete several by selection, or permanently remove all photos with two clicks. If you have not completely emptied the recycle bin yet, it is possible to restore one or more photos with a few clicks as well. 

This guide was created with a Google Pixel phone. The Android version used is Android 12, deleting files for more storage space may differ slightly on devices from other manufacturers. For example, this occurs to some menu items. 

Nevertheless, these instructions should also support deleting photos and other files on older Android versions and deviating smartphone manufacturers that use Android as their operating system.