Owners of Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphones face the same obsession sooner or later, as a warning flashes in the center of the screen that the memory is full and the system starts to work slower. When trying to figure out what exactly takes up precious gigabytes, the user often finds a mysterious section called "Other" or "System Data."
This partition can grow to incredible sizes, taking up 10, 20, and sometimes 40 gigabytes of space. System debris accumulates unnoticed, turning into ballast, which slows down MIUI and HyperOS. In the first part of our guide, we will discuss the nature of these files and how to safely delete them without losing personal data.
Many users make the mistake of starting to delete everything or dropping the phone to factory settings without any pre-preparedness. This is not always necessary. A good memory cleanup requires understanding what is hidden behind the mask of the Other. Let's figure out what this hidden dataset is made of.
What is hidden in the “Other” section really?
The Other section is not just a single file that can be simply taken and deleted, it's a collection of disparate data that the Android operating system can't classify as standard photos, videos, music or installed applications, and it includes cached data, remnants of deleted programs and system logs.
The main “eater” of the place is often instant messengers. Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber store thousands of thumbnails, voice messages and temporary files that are not formally part of the application, but take up space in the system, and it can store firmware update files that were not deleted automatically.
⚠️ Note: Do not attempt to delete files from system folders through root-righted file managers unless you know the exact purpose of each file.
And streaming data often falls into this category, and if you've listened to music on Spotify or Yandex Music offline, or watched movies on Netflix, those files can also be counted in the Other section, and understanding the data structure is the first step to successfully optimizing your device.
Storage analysis: the search for hidden giants
Before you start active, you need to make a thorough diagnosis. Standard MIUI tools give only a superficial idea of the filling of the disk. For a deeper analysis, it is recommended to use the built-in Cleanup tool or third-party snails for visualization.
Go to the storage settings and carefully study the memory allocation schedule. It often happens that after removing a large application, its tails remain in the system. Residual files can weigh hundreds of megabytes. It is also worth checking the download folder, where.apk installation packages, forgotten after installing programs, often accumulate.
For advanced users, it will be useful to use the ADB command to get a detailed report on folder sizes, although in this article we will focus on methods available without a PC connection. Visualization helps to understand which type of data inflated the Other section.
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Use the built-in Security → Cleanup app for your initial analysis. Click on the broom icon, wait for the scan, and then select Clean to remove obvious debris.
Notice the size of the Google Play Services cache.This system component often accumulates huge amounts of temporary data that are formally related to the system but are actually garbage.Its cleaning is safe and often frees up several gigabytes.
Cleaning the cache of leading applications for memory consumption
The most effective way to reduce the size of the Other section is to work with the cache of heavy apps. Social networks and messengers have been overgrown with digital fat for years. To get to it, go to the Settings menu → Apps → All apps.
Find the most "heavy" programs, like TikTok, Instagram or Telegram, and go to the app properties and select Memory, and here you will see the "Clear Cache" button, and it is important not to confuse it with the "Clear Everything" button, because the second action will delete your logins and correspondence.
☑️ Cache cleaning procedure
Telegram has its own caching system, which does not always show correctly in the Android system settings. It is best to clean it through internal settings: Settings → Data and memory → Memory Use.
Inside the messenger settings, you can set a cache size limit. This is an automatic cleanup that will happen without you. Set a limit of, say, 1 GB or 500 MB, and the application will delete old files, making room for new ones.
Working with Android folder and removing residual debris
At the bottom of the file system is the Android folder, which often becomes a haven for forgotten files, and inside it are the data and obb subfolders. The first one stores application data, the second one stores additional files for games. Deleting the content of obb can cause games to stop running.
However, if you delete a game but the folder with its name is still in the Android/obb or Android/data directory, you can delete it. This is a typical example of residual files taking up space. To access these folders in newer versions of Android (11 and above), the system may request special permission.
| Type of folder | Location. | Can I remove it? | Effects of consequences |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cache | Android/data/[app]/cache | Yes. | Safe, the app will create the cache again |
| OBB (Remote Games) | Android/obb/[app_name] | Yes, if the game is deleted. | Not if the game is removed from the system |
| Media | Android/media | Careful. | Maybe the music is missing from the streamers. |
| System | Android/system | No. | Critical system error |
Use Xiaomi's built-in File Manager Explorer. It has a Storage Analyzer feature that groups files by type and size. Large files that you don't recognize often end up in these system directories.
Why is Android hidden in new versions of MIUI?
Cleaning system logs and temporary files
The operating system keeps logs of events, known as logs, that developers need to debug, but the average user doesn't benefit from just taking up space, and log cleaning is a safe procedure that can return a few hundred megabytes.
You don't have to be a programmer. The Developer Menu (which you activate by repeatedly clicking on the build number in About Phone) has a log cleanup feature, but the simpler way is to use the command through ADB or specialized software-cliner apps that have access to system functions.
It's also worth checking the folder. MIUI/debug_log. If you have error reporting enabled in Xiaomi, this folder can grow to gigabytes. Turn off reporting in your Mi Account settings to stop this process in the future.
⚠️ Warning: Cleaning system logs can make it difficult to diagnose problems if your phone crashes immediately after the procedure.
Temporary update files are also often stuck in the system. If your phone is updated but the old version or the new version installation package is not deleted, they will hang dead weight. Check the download folder and the root of the internal drive for files with the.zip or.apk extension with names like update.zip.
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Regularly cleaning logs and temporary files does not speed up the processor, but frees up space for the system to work, preventing errors in writing new data.
Using Developer Mode to Debug USB
Sometimes the Other section gets inflated by USB debugging enabled, even if the phone is not connected to anything, and the system can reserve space for potential debugging logs, and disabling this feature if you're not using it to connect to your PC can help.
Go to Settings → Advanced Settings → Developer. Find the USB Debugging option and make sure it’s turned off. Check the option “Select USB Configuration by Default” and set “Charge Only.”
This will prevent the automatic creation of service files when the charger is connected, and many users forget about this mode, leaving it active for years, leading to a buildup of system debris.
Reset application settings without data loss
If none of the above methods helped radically reduce the size of the Other partition, you can try a tougher but safer method – resetting the settings of specific giant applications.
Go to the app settings, click Clear Everything (not just cache). For instant messengers, that means you have to re-authenticate and configure notifications, but all correspondence (if stored on a server or in the cloud) will remain. This is an effective way to deal with bloated databases inside applications.