Owners of the popular Xiaomi Redmi 4X smartphone often face a nasty situation: the device’s internal memory is running out rapidly, and a detailed analysis of the storage reveals that the lion’s share of space is occupied by the mysterious “Others” section. This system storage can grow to tens of gigabytes, blocking the installation of updates, new applications and even making it impossible to take photos. Understanding the nature of this section is the first step to returning performance to your gadget.
Unlike obvious categories like Photos or Applications, the Other section is a hoard of system caches, residual files from remote programs, instant messenger data and operating system logs. MIUI, the shell installed on Redmi 4X, doesn’t always correctly display the contents of this partition in a standard file manager, which creates the illusion of overflowing memory for no apparent reason. Dealing with what occupies space and safely removing the extra one is a task that requires careful attention.
In this article, we will take a closer look at the structure of your smartphone’s file system, explain why standard cleaning methods often fail, and offer proven algorithms for how to do it. You will learn which files can be deleted without risking the system, and which cannot be touched. Cleaning the folder.thumbnail in hidden system directories can free up to 5 GB of space, which is critical for models with 16 or 32 GB of memory.
Anatomy of the Others: What's Hiding Inside
When you see the Others section taking up 10GB, 15GB or even 20GB, it’s important to understand that it’s not just a single file, but a collection of thousands of small objects. App cache comes in first. Social media, browsers and streaming services save data for fast downloads, but rarely delete it themselves. On Xiaomi Redmi 4X, with its limited storage, this becomes a critical factor.
The second huge layer of data is multimedia in instant messengers. WhatsApp, Telegram and Viber by default store all received photos and videos in the device’s shared memory, classifying them as “Others” by the system unless they are recognized as a standard gallery. Often users store gigabytes of unnecessary pictures and gifs for months without even knowing where they are.
- 📂 Residual files after deleting games and heavy apps that have not been completely cleaned by the system.
- 📂 Temporary system update files MIUI and the apps themselves from Google Play.
- 📂 Error logs and crash reports that are automatically generated when some programs are running.
- 📂 Offline maps of navigators and downloaded playlists of music services.
⚠️ Note: Do not attempt to delete files in Android system folders manually through Explorer unless you know the exact purpose of each object.Deleting.so libraries or configuration files can lead to a cyclical smartphone reboot.
The third category is hidden thumbnail folders, which create smaller copies of your photos and videos for quick viewing in the gallery, and on budget devices like Redmi 4X, the cleaning mechanism sometimes fails, and they start to duplicate themselves, taking up precious space, and geolocation data, voice assistants, and other digital junk that accumulates in the background.
Why can't a standard cleaner see all the trash?
Storage Analysis: How to Find Hidden Files
Before you start taking drastic measures, you need to conduct a qualitative diagnosis. The standard file manager on Xiaomi often hides the default system folders. First, you need to activate the display of hidden files. To do this, open the Explorer app, click on the menu (three bars), and select Settings → Display hidden files.
Once activated, folders will appear in the root directory that start with a dot, such as.android,.data or.cache. This is where the main memory eaters often hide. Pay special attention to the MIUI folder at the root of the memory, which may contain debugging logs and backups that you don't need.
For a deeper analysis, we recommend using specialized tools like DiskUsage or Storage Analyzer, which build a visual memory card by showing the size of each directory in rectangles, which allows you to instantly identify that, for example, the com.whatsapp folder has grown to 8 GB, even though you didn't know it.
It's also important to check the Download folder, and often users download APK installation files, documents, or archives, forget about them, and they lie on the phone for years, automatically falling into the "Others" category, and putting order in this directory is the easiest way to get back a few hundred megabytes.
Safe cleaning through settings and regular facilities
The safest, though not always the most effective, method is to use the built-in MIUI tools. The Security app (green lightning icon) has a Cleanup section. Pressing the scan button allows you to remove obvious debris. However, for deeper cleaning, you need to go to Settings → Memory.
Here you will see a list of applications, sorted by the amount of space you occupy, select the heaviest (usually social networks or games) and click the "Clear" button. The system will prompt you to delete the cache. The cache is temporary data, its deletion is safe and will not lead to loss of personal correspondence or progress in games, unlike the "Erase data" button.
☑️ Checklist for quick cleaning
Also in the memory settings is the "Other" cleanup feature.The system can suggest removing old update files or unused packets.If Redmi 4X offers to delete files larger than 100MB that haven't been used for more than a month, it's generally safe.
| Type of data | Wherever | Can I remove it? | Risks. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cash app. | Settings → Applications | Yes. | Minimum (you will have to reload the data) |
| Folder.thumbnails. | DCIM/.thumbnails | Yes. | The gallery will be slower to open albums. |
| APK files | Download / MIUI | Yes. | Not (if the app has already been installed) |
| System Logs | /data/log or similar | Carefully. | High (root rights needed) |
Remember to reboot your smartphone regularly. When rebooting, Android automatically cleans some temporary files in the /tmp folder and completes the hanging processes that may have blocked garbage removal.
Radical methods: cleaning folders manually
If the regular funds don't work, you'll have to work with the file system directly. To do this, open Explorer and go to the root of internal memory. One of the heaviest folders — MIUI. Inside it, find a folder. debug_log. If it is there and takes up a lot of space, its contents can be safely removed - these are debugging logs that only developers need when searching for errors.
Another candidate for cleaning is the tencent folder (if products from this company are installed, such as games or utilities), often containing cached videos from browsers or temporary files. Android/data. It stores application data. You can delete entire folders from remote games, but it is better to do this through the application management menu, so as not to leave "hanging" links in the registry.
⚠️ Note: Folders with system, data, vendor names are not to be touched, and trying to change their content without root rights will lead to an error, and with rights, to "bricking" the phone.
The DCIM/.thumbnails folder is worth a special attention. As mentioned earlier, it stores thumbnails. You can delete all the contents of this folder. The system will create new thumbnails automatically when you open the gallery again, but the space will be freed up instantly. Be sure to turn on the hidden file display to access this folder.
💡
Tip: If the folder.thumbnails grows quickly again, create an empty file in the DCIM folder called.thumbnails and prevent it from changing (do ReadOnly) through special file managers, such as Total Commander. This will prevent the creation of new thumbnails, but can slow down the scrolling of the photo.
To work with the file system at a deep level, power users are encouraged to connect the phone to a computer in file transfer mode (MTP) or use root-enabled file managers such as Root Explorer or MT Manager.This gives full control over every byte of Redmi 4X memory.
Working with messengers: Telegram and WhatsApp
Messengers are the main culprits in bloating the Others section. Telegram, for example, caches all the videos and photos you've watched, even if you haven't saved them. To fix this, go to the settings of the app itself: Settings → Data and memory → Memory Use. Here you can see the cache volume and clear it with a single button. There you can set up the cache autodeletion, for example, store files only for 3 days or a week.
WhatsApp has a similar situation, but the folder structure is different: Media files are stored in the WhatsApp/Media folder; inside are WhatsApp Images, WhatsApp Video and the hidden.Status folder. Regularly cleaning the Sent folder (sent) also helps, since it duplicates all the files you've ever sent to someone.
- 🗑️ In Telegram, enable the function “Auto-delete media” to free up space in the background.
- 🗑️ On WhatsApp, set up exceptions for group chats so that media from work chats is not automatically saved.
- 🗑️ Use built-in media cleaning tools inside apps, they are safer than manual file deletion.
However, if you manually delete media files through Explorer, they may disappear from the chat, replaced by a “file not found” stub.
💡
Regularly configuring autocleaning the cache inside the messengers themselves is more effective than periodic manual cleaning through the File Manager.
Prevention and use of cloud storage
To prevent the memory overflow problem from returning on Xiaomi Redmi 4X, you need to change the way you store data. Built-in memory is not designed to store photo and video archives. Use cloud services: Google Photos, Yandex.Disk or MI Cloud. Set up an automatic upload of photos, then delete them from the device memory.
It is also good practice to use a microSD card. Although modern versions of Android and MIUI limit the ability to install apps on the card, it is ideal for storing photos, videos, music and documents. Move the DCIM and Download folder to an external medium through settings or file manager.
Regularity is key to success. Set a rule: check the Others section once a month. This will take 5 minutes, but save you from a sudden shortage of space at an important moment. Also, keep an eye out for MIUI updates. In new firmware versions, Xiaomi often optimizes memory and fixes bugs that lead to proliferation of system folders.
⚠️ Note: When transferring files to a memory card, make sure it has a high speed class (Class 10, UHS-I). Slow maps can cause delays in camera and gallery operation.
Don't neglect to reset your app settings that are not behaving properly. If a particular program starts taking up an abnormally large amount of space in the Others section after the update, try clicking Reset or reinstalling it in the application settings, which often solves the problem of bloated cache.