How can i stop phone memory filling up?

donnajunkie

My phone has 16gb internal it is slowly filling up without me adding new apps. I also clear cache everyday. A year ago 8gb was used, now its getting close to 10gb. I am worried it will eventually be full which will restrict what i can do. I do transfer anything that can be to the sd card.
So why is this happening and what can i do if anything?

esuhl

Are you taking lots of photos, or downloading music/video...? That can all be moved to the SD card.

There is an option to move apps to the SD card (which actually just moves the app's data/cache files). Any apps where you get "live" content (news apps, streaming apps, etc.) would probably need large caches. So you could try using the "move app" option on these kinds of app.

You're still quite limited, though. Android doesn't let you move the app executables, some apps don't let you move the data/cache, and the storage space that Android allocates for apps is usually much smaller than the storage space available on the SD card.

There's an amazing app called Apps2SD, which lets you move every part of an app to the SD card, or remove pre-installed apps. You can create a partition on the SD card that is much bigger than Androids built-in system partition, meaning that you can install many more apps without running out of space.

The only catch is that you need root access. This is pretty easy to get, and with modern Android OSes is safe too, since Android only allows root access for individual apps, and only after you've expressly given permission.

Oh... and it's not the most intuitive app to use. It's easy when you know what you're doing, so give us a shout if you have any questions. :-)

Apps2SD Pro (£2.19): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.co.pricealert.apps2sd.pro

Apps2SD Free (with ads): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.co.pricealert.apps2sd

donnajunkie

I didnt mention as it might help. The phone is android. In the settings you can hit transfer to sd card. When i do this it tells me about anything i have on the internal mmory that can be moved and i always do it.

donnajunkie

What is annoying is the amount used on the internal grows without me adding anything new. I dont get why the amount of room used is increasing.

adonis

donnajunkie wrote: »

What is annoying is the amount used on the internal grows without me adding anything new. I dont get why the amount of room used is increasing.

Tell me about it, apps wanting to update when there is no room and that's after deleting stuff.

rsvtoddy

So that within a couple of years you have to buy a new phone with more storage!

Neil_Jones

Doesn't App2SD require a rooted phone to move things? Seemed to need it last time I checked the app...

Apps get bigger and bigger every year. Google Play itself is particularly bloaty - 125Mb Google Play Services, 8.5Mb Google Play Servicers for Instant Apps 8.75Mb, Play Store 22.89Mb... Even the main Google search thing is sitting here taking 183Mb... no wonder nobody's got any space!

esuhl

donnajunkie wrote: »

I didnt mention as it might help. The phone is android. In the settings you can hit transfer to sd card. When i do this it tells me about anything i have on the internal mmory that can be moved and i always do it.

Cool. If it's the system (app) partition where you're running out of space, the only solution is to delete some apps or use Apps2SD.

donnajunkie wrote: »

What is annoying is the amount used on the internal grows without me adding anything new. I dont get why the amount of room used is increasing.

It's a lot of effort to completely re-write an app so that the code is optimally efficient. Instead, as apps are "improved", new code is added with little removed. And there's a never-ending quest to add new features.

So apps tend to get bigger over time, with every update.

rsvtoddy wrote: »

So that within a couple of years you have to buy a new phone with more storage!

Yep. This is the reason that the system partition on Android phones is so limited. And the reason that some phones (iPhones?) don't even let you add more storage with an SD card.

Neil_Jones wrote: »

Doesn't App2SD require a rooted phone to move things? Seemed to need it last time I checked the app...

esuhl wrote: »

The only catch is that you need root access.

^^ Yup.

That shouldn't be a hurdle, though. It's easy and safe enough if you don't deliberately go out of your way to allow random programs root access.

esuhl

Neil_Jones wrote: »

Apps get bigger and bigger every year. Google Play itself is particularly bloaty - 125Mb Google Play Services, 8.5Mb Google Play Servicers for Instant Apps 8.75Mb, Play Store 22.89Mb... Even the main Google search thing is sitting here taking 183Mb... no wonder nobody's got any space!

Crazy, innit? I installed some custom firmware on my old Samsung Galaxy S2, and there wasn't even enough space to install Google Apps! I had to repartition the inbuilt storage with lanchon-repit to set up a basic installation. (And then use Apps2SD.)

https://github.com/Lanchon/REPIT

Neil_Jones

Mind you the two key Facebook apps have the same issue, taking up obscene amount of space between them and, for some reason they take ages to install and update. In fact I got rid of them in the end as I was fed up of waiting ten minutes for each update...

donnajunkie

Some annoyances are there are apps you cant delete and some apps cant be moved to the sd card. With some apps you dont use you can wipe all data but some are connected to your google account and wiping all data causes issues with the google account.
Facebook is 209mb in total. Google is 224mb, messenger 223mb, maps 160mb. They are the worst offenders but there are quite a few well over 50mb. Those totals arent what is on the internal, they are total size of the app.