How to Clean the Other section on Xiaomi Redmi 7A: The Complete Guide

Owners of budget smartphones like the Xiaomi Redmi 7A often face a critical shortage of internal memory, which is compounded when the system partition “Other” begins to grow to a giant size, sometimes occupying more than half of the available space.

Why is this model? It's a small amount of internal memory, 16 or 32 GB, even less of which is available to the user. The MIUI operating system aggressively caches data to speed up work, but the cleaning mechanism lags behind the rate of garbage accumulation, as a result, the phone starts to slow down and new applications stop being installed.

In this article, we'll take a look at not only standard cleaning techniques, but also deeper ways to work with the file system, and you'll learn how to safely remove excess without damaging important data and resetting the device to factory settings unnecessarily.

The nature of the “Other” section in MIUI

The Other section is a kind of black box of the Android file system, and it includes everything that the system cannot uniquely classify as photos, music, videos or documents. In the case of Redmi 7A, messengers and streaming services are the main culprits.

For example, Telegram and WhatsApp store the files they receive in their hidden folders. If you watch a video on Telegram, it's left in the cache. If you listen to music on Spotify or Yandex Music, the tracks are saved for offline listening. The system sees these gigabytes of data, but does not consider them as the user's media library, sending them to the category "Other".

• 📱 Social media and messenger cache that is not automatically cleared.
• 📦 Residual files of remote apps and games you no longer run.
• 📂 Error logs and crash reports that the system generates MIUI.

Special attention should be paid to system updates. Sometimes, after installing a new version of MIUI, the old installation packages are not deleted, but simply transferred to this section, and backups created by the Xiaomi cloud service can also be included if they were not synchronized correctly.

⚠️ Warning: Do not attempt to delete files from system folders manually through root-enabled file managers unless you are sure of their purpose.This can lead to a device building or endless reboot.

Basic cleaning through standard system facilities

The first step that you need to take for a Xiaomi Redmi 7A owner is to use a built-in cleaning tool, which is safe and does not require a computer connection, but it is worth noting that the standard cleaner removes only surface debris.

Go to the Security app, which is pre-installed on all Xiaomi smartphones. Click on the Clean button. The system will analyze the memory and suggest that you delete temporary files. Then go to the Deep Clean section at the bottom of the screen.

Here you'll see a more detailed breakdown. Pay attention to the "Big Files" and "Recent Deletions" section. Often users forget to clear the gallery cart, and deleted photos continue to occupy space, formally being in the "Other" section until they are finally erased.

For more point work, use the built-in conductor. Go along the path of the internal drive. → MIUI → debug_log. If you're not a developer, you don't need debugging files, you can delete them. MIUI → Sound_recorder, If you have ever used a voice recorder, but the records do not matter to you.

Working with the cache of messengers and social networks

As mentioned earlier, the main memory eaters on Redmi 7A are social applications, and standard cleaning often bypasses them to avoid removing important correspondence, so you need to clean them individually through the settings of the application itself.

Take Telegram for example. Go to Settings → Data and Memory → Memory Use. Here you will see the amount of cache you have occupied. Click Clear Cache. Don't worry, your photos and videos won't disappear from the chat rooms, they'll be re-uploaded if needed, but space will be available instantly.

WhatsApp is a little more complicated. It stores backups locally. Go to chat settings and check the backup size. Often, it stores old backups for months, delete them or sync them to Google Drive, and then delete the local files.

Remember Viber and Facebook. Viber often accumulates voice messages and stickers that weigh a little bit separately, but add up to gigabytes. Viber media settings can prevent auto-save to the gallery, which will prevent duplicate files.

Memory analysis with third-party utilities

When built-in tools don't help you understand what's taking up space, specialized analyzers come to the rescue. Xiaomi Redmi 7A is a great application for DiskUsage or Storage Analyzer. They visualize the file system in the form of diagrams.

Once scanned, you'll see a memory card that's squared to the size of files or folders, which allows you to instantly find hidden heavy files that might have been lost deep in the system directories, and often, "Other" is a forgotten movie in a download folder or a 5GB log file.

• 🔍 Visualization of folder structure in the form of rectangles of different sizes.
• 📊 Sorting files by type, date of change and size.
• 🗑️ Ability to quickly remove the found garbage directly from the interface.

Use these tools with caution. If you see a file called data.0 or system.img, which is huge in size, at the root of the system, don't touch it. Look for files in custom directories like DCIM, Download, or Android/obb.

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When using memory analyzers, pay attention to the date of the last file change. Old files that have not changed in months are likely to be deleted without risk to the system.

Cleaning through connection to a computer (ADB and Explorer)

The most effective way to clean the “Other” on Redmi 7A — You can connect to a PC. The computer sees the file system differently, and it lets you remove what's hidden from the mobile interface. USB-cable and file transfer mode (MTP).

Connect your smartphone, select File Transfer mode in the curtain notification. Open the device in My Computer. Go to internal memory. First, find the folder. MIUI and check the subfolders. debug_log, gallery (thumbnails), cloud, sketches of photos (thumbnails) can weigh several gigabytes.

For advanced users, the method is available through ADB (Android Debug Bridge. This requires enabling debugging by USB In the "Developers" menu, the adb shell pm clear command. com.android.package_name It allows you to completely clear the cache and data of a particular application, even a system one, which often makes room where other methods are powerless.

adb shell pm clear com.google.android.gms

This command, for example, will clear Google Play data, which can free up a lot of space if the service is bloated due to synchronization errors, but only use this method if you understand the consequences: the settings of the relevant applications will reset.

⚠️ Warning: When connecting to a PC, always back up important data before deleting unknown files. Deleting system files through Windows Explorer can make the phone inoperable.

Radical measures: Resetting to factory settings

If neither method helped to reduce the Other partition and it continues to grow, there may have been a file system error or a partition table corruption, in which case the only reliable solution for the Xiaomi Redmi 7A is a full reset.

Before you do that, be sure to save all the important contacts, photos and documents to the cloud or computer. Reset will remove absolutely all the data from the device, returning it to the “out of the box” state. After reset, the “Other” section is usually the minimum possible amount necessary for the system to work.

To do the reset, go to Settings → About Phone → Settings Reset → Erase all data. The device will reboot and start the cleanup process. It will take 5 to 15 minutes. Once turned on, the phone will be like new, no unnecessary garbage.

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A complete reset is the only way to guarantee that you can fix file system errors that have caused the Other partition to display or grow incorrectly.

After reset, take your time to install all the apps at once, install them one by one and monitor your memory, which will help identify the culprit if the problem was caused by a particular bug application.

Preventing memory overflow in the future

To prevent the situation with the “Other” section on Redmi 7A from repeating itself, you need to change your smartphone usage habits, and regular memory hygiene is more important than periodic “general cleaning”.

Set up automatic cleaning in messengers. Telegram, for example, you can set autodelete the cache in 3 days or a week. On YouTube, turn off autosave videos for offline viewing if you rarely watch them without the Internet.

• 📅 Check the downloads folder once a month and delete unnecessary ones. APK-file.
• ☁️ Use cloud services (Google Photos, Yandex.Disk) to store media, including the function “Free space».
• 🚫 Turn off the auto-save stickers and GIF-animations in the gallery of messengers.

It is also recommended not to fill the internal memory to the fullest. For stable operation of Android and the mechanism "Other" you need to leave free at least 10-15% of the total. On 16 GB model this is critically important - try to keep free at least 2 GB.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)