Note: The following guide includes screenshots from a device running Android 9. The path to each function may differ if you’re using another Android version.
Use the built-in “Free up space” tool
In Android, there’s a built-in tool that helps you delete unnecessary data such as cached, residual, and advertisement files. If you’ve never used this tool, you’re likely to free up at least 1 GB or more. But since I used this tool as recently as yesterday it will only clean 10.3 MB on my device as seen in the image below.
On your device
Go to Settings > Device care > Storage and tap Clean now.
Sort your files in a File Manager
There’s also a more manual way to get rid of unwanted files in Android. By using your File Manager, you get an overview of all the files on your device. If you’d like to sort and delete documents such as .pdf files, for example, you simply enter the document folder where you’ll find all your documents and can delete the ones that aren’t relevant or the ones takes up too much space.
On your device
Go to All your apps > File Manager and start sorting your files.
Overlook your apps
In order to free up even more space on your device, a smart way is to check on your installed apps. You can sort them by size and delete the ones you don’t use, or you can manage storage on apps that you want to keep but that takes up too much space.
On your device
Go to Settings > Apps. Tap the top-right corner and select Sort by size. Tap the app you want to delete or manage storage for. Either select Uninstall or go to Storage > Manage storage to manually delete parts of data coming from the app.
Extra
If you still need more space on your device after performing the steps above there are ways to access files without them being stored in the local memory on your device.
You can either upload your files to a cloud service such as Google Drive or transfer them to a memory card that rugged Android devices often have support for.
Read more: How to choose the right SD card
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