Xiaomi and Redmi smartphone owners often face the mysterious situation of a device with overloaded memory and standard analysis tools unable to explain exactly where gigabytes went. A section called Others appears in storage, which can take anywhere from 5 to 50 gigabytes, turning a fast flagship into a braking device, a system partition that accumulates data that does not fall into standard categories like Photos, Apps or Video.
This problem is important to address, as overcrowded memory leads to performance declines, inability to install updates and even sudden shutdowns of applications. Android on the shell of MIUI or HyperOS has its own caching features, which often lead to bloating this partition. In this article, we will discuss in detail the nature of the occurrence of redundant data and methods for its safe removal.
Many users mistakenly believe that these are system files that you can't touch and wait for the phone to free up space, but in reality, there is a buildup of digital garbage, remnants of deleted programs and huge messenger cache files, and cleaning it properly will give your gadget speed without having to reset completely.
Nature of the Others section in the repository
To effectively combat this problem, you need to understand what the volume of the Others section consists of, first of all, temporary files that create applications to speed up their work: browsers save copies of the pages visited, and social networks save thumbnails of the photos and videos viewed, so that when they are reopened, they load instantly.
The second big category is the remnants of remote applications, where when you delete a game or utility through a standard interface, some of its files can remain in memory, and system logs and error reports are also written here, taking up a lot of space over time.
⚠️ Note: Not all files in this section are garbage, but may store important offline map data, downloaded music playlists, and draft documents.
The third reason is file system fragmentation and indexing errors, and sometimes the phone just forgets to move the file to the right category when analyzing the storage, and MIUI algorithms can misclassify large archives or files of unknown format, sending them to a pile.
- 📱 App cache: temporary data of Instagram, TikTok, YouTube.
- 🗑️ Residual files: traces of deleted games and programs.
- 📝 System Logs: Error logs and diagnostic reports.
- 📦 Archives and documents: files that the system could not recognize.
Basic cleaning through built-in MIUI tools
The first thing to try is the standard cleaning tools that are already built into your Xiaomi Redmi.They don’t require any additional software installation and are safe for the system. Start with the Security app, which is pre-installed on all the brand’s devices.
Run the app and select Clean up, and the system will do a quick analysis and suggest removing any apparent debris, but to work with the Others section, you need to go to Deep Cleanup, where the algorithm works more carefully, scanning folders with cache and temporary files.
💡
Before deep cleaning, close all working applications so that files are not blocked by processes and can be deleted correctly.
It's important to read carefully what the system suggests to remove, often large video files from messengers or attachments from mail, and manually checking the list before confirming the action will help save important data.
- 🧹 Run the standard cleaning through the Security app.
- 🔍 Use the Deep Clean feature to scan the cache.
- 📂 Check the “Big Files” section inside the utility.
- ✅ Filter the results carefully before removal.
Analysis of storage through computer and conductor
If the built-in tools didn't work, you need to connect to the phone through a computer, which will allow you to see the real structure of the folders and find the heavyweights that are hiding in the Others section. USB and select the file transfer mode (MTP).
On your computer, use a disk analysis program like WinDirStat or TreeSize Free, which visualizes the contents of your phone's memory by showing which folders take up the most space, and it often turns out that half of the volume is occupied by Android/data or Android/obb folders.
These directories store app data, for example, Telegram cache or downloaded navigator maps can weigh tens of gigabytes, and deleting the contents of those folders will make room, but can reset the settings of the respective applications.
Should I delete the.thumbnails folder?
Also worth looking at is the MIUI/Gallery/cloud/cache folder, where cloud thumbnails can accumulate, and cleaning up that directory often returns several gigabytes of free space.
Cleaning the cache of messengers and social networks
The leaders in filling the “Others” section are invariably messengers, Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber retain every photo and video viewed, and over time this stream turns into a giant archive, which the system classifies as “Other Files”.
In Telegram, you need to go to Settings → Data and Memory → Memory Use. Here you will see the Cached Data slider and the exact amount of space you occupy. Click Clear Cache. This action will not remove your correspondence and media files from the cloud, but will re-download them if necessary.
For WhatsApp, the path is a little different: Settings → Data and Storage → Storage Management. You can delete large files or media from specific chats. This is the most effective way to combat partition sprawl.
☑️ Cleaning up messengers
Remember that once the cache is cleared, applications can run a little slower on their first run, as they will have to re-download some of the data from the network. This is normal behavior for mobile OSes.
Use of third-party disk analyzers
When standard methods are exhausted, specialized analysis applications come to the rescue, and they build a detailed memory card, allowing you to find hidden files that a standard conductor can't see. One of the best solutions is the DiskUsage or Storage Analyzer application.
These ulites show memory as a graphical diagram, where each block is the size of a file or folder, and you'll see which directory is inflated, often with names like.cache or temporary update files.
⚠️ Be very careful when deleting files through third-party analyzers. Deleting system libraries can lead to unstable phone operation.
Find the largest blocks on the diagram and analyze their contents. If it's application logs or temporary installer files, delete it. If it's game or work document data, leave it.
- 📊 Download the disk analyzer from Google Play.
- 🔍 Scan the internal memory of the device.
- 🗂️ Find the most extensive folders on the chart.
- 🗑️ Delete unnecessary cache and temporary files.
Radical measures: resetting and reflashing
If the Others section is critical and can’t be cleaned by any method, the last option is a complete reset, which will return the phone to factory status by removing all user content and system debris.
Before starting the procedure, be sure to back up important data to the cloud or computer. Go to Settings → About Phone → Reset → Erase all data. The process will take a few minutes.
💡
Full reset is the only way to guarantee that you will remove the indexing errors that inflate the Others section.
Once reset, the phone will be as new as it is, and the Others section will be minimal, so that the problem does not recur, regularly clean the messenger cache and do not store files on the device that can be moved to the cloud.
| Cleaning method | Efficiency | Security | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built-in cleaning | Low. | Tall. | Easy. |
| Cleaning up the app cache | Medium | Tall. | Easy. |
| Analysis through PC | Tall. | Medium | Middle-Average |
| Third-party analyzers | Tall. | Medium | Middle-Average |
| Total reset | Maximum | Demands backup. | Long time. |