How to Clean Up Your Xiaomi Phone: An Expert Guide

The situation where MIUI or the new HyperOS reports a lack of free space is familiar to every smartphone owner: the device starts to run slower, cameras refuse to shoot high-resolution video, and messengers stop downloading images, not just an inconvenience, but a signal that the system partition of internal memory is full of temporary files and digital debris.

Unlike its competitors, Xiaomi’s operating system has deep integration with cloud services and aggressive caching algorithms, which creates the illusion of a lack of gigabytes even on models with 256 GB of storage. Understanding the structure of the Android file system allows you not only to remove a couple of applications, but to conduct deep optimization of storage.

In this article, we will explore the non-obvious methods of freeing up space that users often ignore: you will learn where the “heavy” logs of system services hide, how to safely delete social network data without losing correspondence, and why standard cleaning through “Security” is not always effective.

Analysis of space through built-in tools

The first step is always to diagnose, and don't rush to remove your favorite apps until you know what's taking up the lion's share of the resource, and in the MIUI and HyperOS shell, it's a standard tool that's often underrated.

To start the analysis, go to Settings → Memory. The system will scan and give a color diagram of the data distribution. Note the Others section, the most mysterious category, which often inflates to tens of gigabytes.

• 📱 Applications and their data – here is stored the cache of Telegram, WhatsApp and browsers.
• 📷 Gallery – original photos and videos, including those deleted but not cleared from the cart.
• 📂 Documents and downloads - forgotten installation APK-file PDF-file.

It is important to distinguish the size of the application and the amount of data it has accumulated. Messenger can weigh 200 MB, but its cache with media files easily takes 15 GB.

⚠️ Attention: The Cleanup feature in the standard Security app often removes only the surface cache. For deep cleaning, you need to manually check the folders of heavy applications, as automation is afraid to delete important user data.

Use a built-in analyzer to identify heavyweights. Often, it turns out that half the memory is occupied by three applications that you barely use, but they continue to collect data in the background.

Working with cache and data messengers

The most voracious elements of the Android ecosystem are messengers. Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber by default store all received media files in internal memory, creating duplicates and taking up space.

Telegram handles the situation in the most elegant way possible. Go to Settings → Data and memory → Memory usage. Here you will see a slider "Storage media" set the value of "3 days" or "1 week"; this will not delete the correspondence, but automatically erase the cache of old photos and videos from the device, leaving them available in the cloud.

WhatsApp is more difficult because it stores databases locally to make room:

1. Open the app and go to Settings → Data and Storage → Storage Management.
2. Sort the files by size.
3. Select large video files and delete them selectively.

Don't forget the hidden folders. In File Manager Explorer, follow the Android → media → com.whatsapp → WhatsApp → Media → Statuses. It stores all the contact statuses you've been viewing. It's dead weight that can be safely removed.

Cleaning messenger cache regularly is the fastest way to get a few gigabytes of free space back without losing important information.

Removing duplicates and optimizing the Gallery

Modern cameras of Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphones take high-resolution images. One minute video in 4K can weigh 400 MB. The accumulated archive over the years becomes the main reason for the lack of space.

The newer versions of MIUI's Gallery app, which is built-in, has a feature to search for similar photos, allows you to quickly select the best picture from the series and delete the rest, but it's better to use specialized utilities or manual search through Files → Images to find exact duplicates.

Notice the Screenshots folder, and we often take screenshots of tickets, correspondence, or instructions that are only valid for one day, and within a month, they become digital garbage, which takes up megabytes.

• 🗑️ Check the Deleted folder – files are stored there for 30 days and take up space.
• ☁️ Use Xiaomi Cloud or Google Photos cloud sync with Free up space».
• 🎥 Put the camera in a lighter format recording mode if 4K You don't need it.

💡

Enable the “Effective HEIF/HEVC format” function in the camera settings, which will save photos and videos of the same quality, but with a smaller file size, saving up to 50% of space.

Don't ignore the ability to migrate your archive to a computer or external hard drive, and storing terabytes of personal photos on your phone is inefficient and risky in terms of data security.

Cleaning Download folder and system garbage

Download is a black hole in internal memory, and browsers, email clients, and instant messengers, by default, drop all downloaded files there. APK-Update files you have already installed often stay there for months.

Go to Explorer and open the Downloads category. Sort files by date or size. Delete all application installers (.apk), old documents, and temporary files.

It’s also worth checking the folders of specific applications, for example, Chrome can save pages for offline access, and YouTube can save cache of videos viewed if the corresponding feature is enabled. The path to these is usually in Android → data, but access to them in new versions of Android is limited, so use the built-in file manager.

System debris also accumulates as you work, and periodic smartphone reboots help the system to self-delete temporary files that are no longer needed for ongoing processes.

Use of Developer Mode and ADB

For advanced users who want to make the most of their device, there are USB debugging methods available to remove system cache and application data that are not available through a regular interface.

First, activate Developer Mode. Go to Settings → About Phone and press 7 times on either MIUI Version or OS Version. Then, in the advanced settings, turn on USB Debugging.

By connecting the phone to a computer with an ADB installed, you can execute a command to clear the cache of a particular application:

adb shell pm clear com.package.name

This command completely resets the application, removing all its data and cache, and use it with caution only if you understand what the package is responsible for.