Where to find the “Other” section in Xiaomi memory: full analysis

Owners of Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphones are faced with a mysterious situation: internal storage is crowded, although the gallery has almost no photos and applications installed the most necessary. In the Memory section, you see a frightening diagram where the lion’s share of space is occupied by the Other category. This section is often called the “junk tank” of the system, but in fact it stores caches, downloads and system logs that are not defined as standard media files. Understanding exactly where this data is hidden and how to manage it is critical for the stable operation of the operating system.

The problem of inflating this partition is especially relevant for the MIUI shells and the new HyperOS, which have their own file indexing features. The user may notice that after watching a video in the messenger or updating the maps, the volume of the Other increases dramatically. The system partition is not a mistake, but a collection of cached application data that Android cannot automatically classify. Ignoring the overflow of this buffer can lead to a slowdown of the interface and problems with installing new updates.

In this article, we will take a closer look at the architecture of the brand’s smartphone storage, which files are taking up space, how to safely access hidden folders, and whether to use third-party tools for deep cleaning. We will look at both standard cleaning tools and advanced methods of working with the file system through the computer.

What is hidden in the category "Other" in fact

To effectively combat space shortage, you need to understand the nature of the phenomenon: the category "Other" is not one particular file, but an aggregated metric. First of all, it is the cache of social networks and messengers. When you watch videos on Telegram or WhatsApp, it is stored in memory for quick replay. The system sees these files as temporary data of applications, but does not classify them as "Video" or "Images", so they fall into "Other".

The second important component is offline map data and navigation. Apps like Yandex.Maps or Google Maps can download huge amounts of data to work without the Internet. It also often hides error logs, crash reports and temporary files left after deleting applications. The Android file system simply marks the space as free, but physically the bytes remain on the disk until the time you overwrite them.

⚠️ Warning: Don’t try to manually delete files from system folders unless you know their exact purpose. Deleting critical libraries can lead to a cyclical smartphone reboot (bootloop).

And streaming services deserve special attention. YouTube, Spotify, or Netflix cache can take up gigabytes of space, and this data is needed for quick buffering, but it's not "your" files in the full sense of the word, which is why cleaning this partition often gives you an instant result of freeing up space.

How to find hidden files through a regular conductor

The first and most secure way to look inside the memory is to use built-in tools. The MIUI and HyperOS shells have a powerful file manager preinstalled. To see hidden data, you need to activate the display of hidden files, usually through the conductor's own settings or a special gesture.

In the standard Explorer app, click on three menu bars and select Settings, and you'll find the Show Hidden Files switch and activate it, and then you'll have folders in the root directory of internal memory that start with a dot, and that's where configs and temps often hide.

The Android/data folder was open to the public in older versions of Android, but newer versions (Android 11, 12, 13, 14) have limited access to security policies. However, Xiaomi Explorer still allows you to view the contents of this directory, where most of the cache volumes of games and applications are stored.

Memory analysis using the Security app

Every Xiaomi smartphone has a Security system app, which is not just an antivirus, but a powerful memory management tool, and Cleansing allows you to find large files that the system has classified as junk, but standard cleaning is often superficial.

For a deeper analysis, use App Management inside your settings. Go to Settings → Apps → All apps. Sort the list by location. You'll be surprised to find that the messenger is 10GB, even though the chats are text only. This is the same amount that in general memory statistics is displayed as "Other."

Inside a specific app’s menu (like Telegram), you’ll find a “Memory Use” or “Cache” button, where you can safely clear temporary files without deleting correspondence, the most effective way to reduce the volume of “Other” without risking losing important data.

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Use the Deep Clean feature in the Security app regularly, and it finds similar photos, old screenshots, and installer APK files that are no longer needed after installing the software.

Using Google’s Files app for detailed cleaning

The regular tools are good, but sometimes a more flexible tool is needed. Files by Google (often preinstalled or available on the Play Market) is a de facto standard for memory analysis. It uses machine learning algorithms to categorize files that Xiaomi's system may have missed.

Once you start the app, go to the Overview tab and scroll down to the File Cleanup section. Here you will see categories: Large Files, Old Screenshots, Screencasts, Duplicates. The algorithm will suggest removing files larger than 100 MB that you may have forgotten in downloads.

The main advantage of this method is transparency: you see a file preview before deleting, which eliminates the situation when the user mistakenly erases an important document mistaken for cache, and the application is able to find files that have not been opened for more than a year and suggest archiving or deleting them.

Cleaning through connection to a computer (PC)

The most complete control of the file system you get when you connect your smartphone to your PC. The computer sees the phone as an external drive (MTP mode), which allows you to use powerful disk analysis tools such as WinDirStat (for Windows) or DaisyDisk (for macOS).

Connect your phone with a USB cable, select File Transfer mode in the notification curtain, run the disk analyzer on your computer and select the letter of your smartphone's drive, and the program will build a visual memory card, where the color will indicate the size of the files, and you will immediately see which folder is bloated.

The path for manual garbage search: /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/

Look for folders with application names (e.g. com.whatsapp, com.tencent.mm). Inside, you often find folders cache, temp, tmp. Their content can be deleted safely. Also check the Download folder - it often accumulates APK installation files and documents from mail that are no longer needed.

⚠️ Note: When connecting to a PC, do not delete files from folders with system services names (e.g. com.android.providers or com.miui.

Radical methods: resetting and flashing

If the volume of the Other reaches tens of gigabytes and does not decrease after all the cleanings, it is possible that the file system is damaged or has accumulated indexing errors, in which case a full reset (Factory Reset) helps.

Before you do that, make sure to back up your data to the Mi Cloud or your computer, and reset your phone back to factory status by formatting the memory partitions, and that's guaranteed to remove all the junk, as it will physically erase all user data.

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If the “Other” section grows again quickly after resetting without active user actions, this may indicate a flash memory malfunction or bug in a particular firmware version.

In extreme cases, when even a reset doesn’t help (which is rare), you need to flash the device through your computer using the Mi Flash Tool utility.This will completely replace the software and re-mark memory partitions, eliminating any logical errors of the file system.

Prevention of memory overflow

To prevent the “Other” problem from returning too often, change your smartphone usage habits. In the messaging settings (especially Telegram and WhatsApp), set the cache autodelete. For example, in Telegram, you can set the “Storage Media” option for 3 days or 1 week. The application will delete old files from memory, leaving them in the cloud.

Check the Downloads folder regularly. Many apps, including browsers and email clients, keep all attachments by default. Also try not to use widgets with frequently updated content on your desktop if you have little memory, as they create a lot of cache.

Use cloud services to store photos and videos. Set up automatic synchization with Google Photos or Yandex.Disk with the function “Free space” allows you to store originals in the cloud, and on the phone to leave only compressed copies or delete them altogether, freeing up gigabytes of space.