What to remove on Xiaomi: Safe Memory Cleanup

Xiaomi smartphones are famous for their performance and functionality, but over time, even the most powerful devices begin to signal a lack of free space. Owners often notice that the system is slower, applications fly out, and new updates stop installing. This is because the Android operating system in the shell of MIUI or HyperOS accumulates a huge number of temporary files, logs and cache that are not deleted automatically.

Before you panic and delete important photos or contacts, you need to understand the structure of the storage. The system often hides the real amount of space occupied, showing only the tip of the iceberg. Analysis of the storage is the first and most important step to identify hidden “eaters” of gigabytes, such as streaming services or instant messengers.

In this article, we will discuss in detail which folders and files can be deleted without fear of damaging the performance of your smartphone. You will learn about safe methods of cleaning system debris and about which directories you should not touch. The right approach to memory management will prolong the life of your device and return it to its previous speed.

Fullness Analysis: Search for Hidden Files

First, you need to use built-in diagnostics. Xiaomi’s standard Explorer or Files app has a powerful analyzer that groups data by type. Often, it turns out that the lion’s share of memory is occupied not by the application’s installation files, but by their cache and downloaded media files from messengers.

Note the DCIM folder. This is where all your photos and videos are stored. High-resolution 4K videos can take up gigabytes of space in just one day of active shooting. It's also worth checking out the MIUI → gallery → cloud folder, where local copies of deleted albums can remain.

You can use third-party tools to do a deeper analysis, but often you have built-in functionality. Go to Settings → About Phone → Storage. Here, the system will suggest cleaning up the garbage, but manual control will be more efficient. It's important to understand the difference between user data and system files.

• 📸 folder DCIM — main storage of photos and video from the camera.
• 💬 Tencent folder or Android/media — Here are stored files from WhatsApp and Telegram.
• 📥 Download folder – all downloaded files from the Internet that are often forgotten.
• 🗑️ Trash folder or Recycle Bin in the gallery where deleted files lie.

⚠️ Warning: Before mass deletion of files from unknown folders, be sure to copy them to your computer or to the cloud.

Cleaning the application cache and system debris

App caches are temporary files that speed up programs but inflate over time to incredible sizes. For example, a browser, YouTube or social network cache can take anywhere from 500 MB to several gigabytes. Clearing this data does not delete your logins or passwords, but resets temporary settings and thumbnails.

To do a deep clean, go to Settings → Apps → All apps. Select a heavy app (like Chrome or Instagram) and click Memory. Here you will see the Clear Cache button. Don't confuse it with the Clear Everything button, as the latter will reset the app to its state immediately after installation, removing your authorization.

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Use Xiaomi’s built-in Security app to quickly clear the cache.It automatically finds temporary files that can be deleted without risk to the system.

System debris also accumulates as MIUI works, including update logs, remnants of deleted programs, and temporary installation files, and a standard cleaner does a good job of doing this, but sometimes manual intervention through a file manager is required.

• 🚀 Google Play Services cache is growing frequently after service updates.
• 📱 The launcher cache is responsible for icons and the location of widgets on the desktop.
• 🌐 Browser cache stores copies of visited pages for fast loading.

Cleaning your cache regularly is a good habit, especially if you’re actively using multimedia applications, but doing it too often (every day) doesn’t make sense, as it takes time for the system to recreate temporary files, which can temporarily increase battery consumption.

Working with MIUI folders: what can you touch

Xiaomi's file system has a very specific structure, and at the root of the internal drive is the MIUI folder, which contains key system and application data, and we'll see which subfolders are safe to clean.

folder MIUI → debug_log It contains the logs of the system debugging. If you're not a developer and you're not debugging the firmware, you don't need those files. They can take hundreds of megabytes. MIUI → gallery → Cloud – there may be thumbnails of cloud photos that have already been deleted.

Special attention should be paid to the backup folder, which stores backup copies of your data created by the built-in MIUI tool. If you recently made a backup and transferred it to your computer, or if you no longer need it (for example, this is an old backup from another phone), the contents of this folder can be safely deleted.

Messengers: Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber

The biggest memory eaters on a modern smartphone are instant messengers. Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber store every photo and video they receive in the device’s memory by default, and over time, this becomes a huge data dump that many users don’t even notice.

In Telegram, the situation is solved in the most elegant way. In the application settings, find the section “Data and memory” → “Memory Use”. Here you can clear the cache with a single button. Moreover, turn on the “Autodemedia” function so that the application itself deletes old files without taking up space on the disk.

WhatsApp is more complicated. Files are stored in the Android → media → com.whatsapp folder. There are WhatsApp Images and WhatsApp Video folders inside. Often there are thousands of unnecessary Good Morning pictures and viral videos. Delete them through the file manager is safe, but it is better to do this through the built-in storage management in the application itself: Settings → Data and Storage → Storage Management.

⚠️ Note: When cleaning messenger folders through the file manager, make sure you do not delete the message database (files with the.db or.crypt extension).

And don't forget about Viber. This messenger is famous for duplicating media files in different folders. Check the Viber directory at the root of the storage. There's often a Backup folder that contains backups of chats. If you don't need them, delete them without a doubt.

• 🗑️ In Telegram, the cache can be cleaned without losing correspondence.
• 📂 WhatsApp Stores Videos in a Separate Folder That’s Easy to Find.
• 📼 Viber often saves statuses and hidden media in the root folder.

Deletion of duplicates and heavy video files

Often, multiple copies of the same file are stored on the phone, which occurs when you sync with different clouds, re-download or crash the camera, and duplicates can take up to 15-20% of all available space.

The best way to find the same files is to use specialized applications, because manually doing this is long and inefficient. However, if you prefer manual control, look at the DCIM →.thumbnails folder. This is a hidden folder that stores thumbnails for the gallery. It can grow to several gigabytes.

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The.thumbnails folder in the DCIM folder is a hidden thumbnail cache that can be safely deleted, but the system will recreate it the next time you open the gallery.

High-resolution video files are another source of problems. One minute video in 4K 60fps can weigh 400-500MB. Check the DCIM → Camera folder and sort files by size. Often, old, forgotten videos take up more space than all the apps combined.

Also worth checking is the Pictures → Screenshots folder. Screenshots tend to accumulate over the years. Many users take a screenshot of important information and then forget about it.

System Files and Android folders: Risk Zone

At the root of the file system is the Android folder, which is the heart of the operating system, where all the installed applications are stored, and it has data and obb folders inside it. It's highly recommended that you don't manually delete the contents of those folders unless you know exactly what the particular directory is responsible for.

Deleting the Android/data folder can cause apps to lose their settings, game progress, or stop running. The Android/obb folder contains a cache of heavy games (like PUBG or Genshin Impact), which deletion will cause the game to download data again when it launches.

However, if the app is deleted but its tails are left in the Android/data folder (sometimes this happens when crashes), they can be deleted. Look for folders with names of remote applications. It is also safe to delete folders with names log or tmp inside the Android structure, if you are sure of their temporary purpose.

Safe ways to check:


/Android/media/com.whatsapp (media WhatsApp)




/Android/data/com.telegram.messenger/cache (Telegram cache)




/Download (downloads)




/Bluetooth (Bluetooth files)

⚠️ Note: Never delete.apk files from your system folders unless you are sure it is an installer.

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions