How to Clean Xiaomi Phone From Unnecessary Files: The Complete Guide

Xiaomi’s smartphones, including the popular Redmi and POCO series, are known for their excellent performance, but even they eventually start to run slower. The main reason for the slowdown and the appearance of delays in the interface is often overcrowded storage. When the system partition is crammed to the end, the MIUI or HyperOS operating system can not efficiently cache data, which leads to slowdown.

Many users face annoying notifications of space shortages, although there are no visually large files in the gallery, due to the accumulation of digital “junk”: residual files of deleted applications, messenger cache and temporary system data.

In this article, we will look at proven cleaning methods, from standard tools to advanced file manager techniques, learn how to find the hidden folders that take up the most space and safely delete them without risking damage to the system. Regular memory maintenance is the key to a long and stable operation of your smartphone.

Use of the built-in "Security" application

The first step in the battle for space should always be a regular app from the developers of the system. In Xiaomi firmware, it is called "Security" and has a green icon with a shield. This tool is deeply integrated into the system, so its cleaning algorithms work correctly and do not delete critical system files.

When you start Cleanup, the scanner analyzes the contents of internal memory, detecting application cache, installer packet residues and advertising files, and it takes only a few seconds to remove the debris, and it's important not to blindly trust the automation, but to look at file categories before confirming it.

⚠️ Attention: In the Cleanup section, you often find "big files." Be careful: your personal videos or archives of documents, if they take up a lot of space, may be trashed by the system.

For a deeper analysis, you can use the Deep Clean feature, which is on the app menu, which allows you to find duplicate photos, rarely used apps and old screenshots, and automating the process helps maintain order if you set up a weekly reminder.

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Set up automatic cache cleanup in the Security app so that the phone itself vacates the space once a week without your involvement.

Analysis and cleanup through File Manager

The standard Explorer or File Manager on Xiaomi provides a more detailed view of the storage structure than a simple cleanup. Going to Storage Analysis, you'll see a graphic memory distribution diagram, and you'll see exactly what kind of data is eating up the space.

Special attention should be paid to the folders of social networks and instant messengers. Apps like Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber tend to store all the received media files in the memory of the phone, creating huge archives. Android/media or root folders of messengers and manually delete heavy video files.

Also worth checking is the Download folder, which is often overlooked by downloaded app installers (.apk), pdf documents and images from the Internet that have been dead weight for years, and removing content from this directory is safe and often frees up several gigabytes.

• 📂 folder DCIM — Here are your photos and video from the camera, check the basket inside the gallery.
• 📂 Directory MIUI — contains screenshots, recordings of the recorder and logs of errors (folder) debug_logs).
• 📂 Android directory – here lies the cache of applications, but you need to selectively delete files inside.

Deletion of cache and data of specific applications

The most memory-hungry sites are usually social networks and browsers, which accumulate temporary files to load content quickly, but over time, this cache inflates to an incredible size, and to clean them, you need to go to your smartphone settings, select the "Apps" section and find "All Apps."

Select the app you want (like TikTok or Instagram) and click Memory. Here you will see two buttons: Clear cache and Clear all data. The first one deletes temporary files without affecting your logins and settings. The second button completely resets the app to just installed, requiring re-authorization.

⚠️ Note: The Clear All Data button will remove correspondence in some messengers if the backup is not enabled, and all settings within the application. Use this feature only if you understand the consequences.

The Chrome browser or the built-in MIUI Browser, which have a "History" and "Cash" setting, can return hundreds of megabytes of free memory, and cleaning this data regularly also increases the privacy and speed of the browser.

Working with Android folder and system garbage

The hardest part to understand, but the most important part of cleaning up is working with system directories. The Android folder contains data and obb subfolders. Obb stores heavy game data (graphics packages), and data stores user data of applications. Deleting folders from already remote games is safe and necessary here.

Often, after you delete a game, its tails remain in the system. Find folders with the names of deleted programs in the root of internal memory or in Android/data and delete them. Also, you should pay attention to the thumbnails folder inside the DCIM. It stores thumbnails of your photos for the gallery. If you delete the contents of this folder, the gallery will work a little slower on the first run, but you will free up space.

For advanced users, there is the possibility of cleaning through a computer using ADB-And with standard file manager tools, you can safely remove the contents of the cache folder at the root of the system if you have root rights, but standard firmware doesn't allow access to it.

Cleaning up garbage in messengers

Messengers are the main memory eaters on a modern smartphone. Telegram, for example, by default caches all the photos and videos viewed so that they open instantly without the Internet. Over time, this cache can grow to 10-20 GB. Cleaning must be done inside the application itself through settings: Settings → Data and memory → Memory Use.

WhatsApp has a similar situation, but it has a convenient storage management feature. Go to Settings → Data and Storage → Storage Management. The app will show the files that take up the most space and let you delete them in groups or separately. This is the most secure way, because you see a preview of the ones that are being deleted.

Remember Viber and WeChat. Viber needs to go to More → Settings → Memory. You can clear the cache and delete the downloaded files. It's important to know that clearing the cache inside the Telegram app won't delete your correspondence, it's stored on the server, but it will delete the downloaded media files from the phone's memory.

• 🚀 Enable autodelete the cache in Telegram settings (for example, after 3 days).
• 🚀 Turn off auto-save photo to the phone gallery in WhatsApp settings.
• 🚀 Regularly check the tab "Downloaded files" in the memory settings.

Additional Methods and Cloud Services

If built-in methods are not enough, you can use cloud services. Google Photos and Google Drive allow you to free up space on your device by uploading media to the cloud. Google Photos has a Free Place feature that removes photos from your phone that are already stored in the cloud.

Xiaomi’s Mi Cloud is useful for users of the Xiaomi ecosystem, which can synchronize contacts, messages and photos by giving them local copies, and it’s also worth considering installing specialized utilities like Files by Google, which often find more garbage than standard tools, thanks to smarter analysis algorithms.

A cardinal but effective method is factory resetting, which is a last resort, when the phone is slow even after cleaning. Before you do that, make sure to back up the data completely. Once reset, the phone will be like new, without the excess software debris accumulated over the years of use.

⚠️ Warning: Before resetting to factory settings, make sure you remember the password from your Mi Account and Google account.Otherwise, the phone may lock after rebooting (FRP lock).

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A comprehensive approach (cache cleaning + messengers + cloud) gives a better result than using only one cleaning method.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)