How to Open and Clean the “Other” folder on Xiaomi Android

The problem of crowded internal storage is familiar to every owner of Xiaomi and Redmi smartphones. Often users notice that the lion’s share of memory is occupied by a section with the mysterious name “Other”, which can grow to tens of gigabytes. This section becomes a real “black box” where the system resets the cache of applications, temporary update files, remnants of deleted programs and error logs, making standard cleaning through settings almost useless.

Unlike standard categories like Photos or Applications, the Other folder has no direct analogue in the file system that is accessible to the average user through a standard Explorer. It is actually a collection of system data that the MIUI or HyperOS shell cannot automatically classify. Understanding the nature of these files is the first step to freeing up space, since blindly deleting system files can lead to unstable device operation.

There are several proven methods to look inside the storage and safely remove the excess, and we'll look at both the standard tools of the system and more advanced methods using debugging mode and third-party disk space analyzers. It's important to act consistently so that you don't damage the critical data for the smartphone.

What is hidden inside the “Other” section

Before we start taking radical action, we need to understand the structure of the space we occupy, and the "Other" section is not one particular folder that we can find and delete, but an aggregated measure of the space we occupy, and this includes data that the system does not classify as media files or as installed applications in their pure form.

The bulk of the mass is usually the cache files of messengers such as Telegram or WhatsApp. These applications store the images and videos viewed in temporary storage, which over time can weigh 10-20 GB. It also stores offline maps of navigators, downloaded music tracks in streaming services and temporary browser files.

⚠️ Note: The files in the Other section may include debugging logs and error reports, and deletion is safe, but if you notice files with a huge.log extension, it may indicate a malfunction of a particular application that constantly records data.

Special attention should be paid to the remnants of remote applications. When programs are uninstalled, some configuration files or downloaded resources may remain in memory, the system marks them as “other” because they are no longer tied to the active installer.apk.

Use of built-in storage analyzer

The safest and first step for a Xiaomi owner is to use standard diagnostic tools. MIUI shell is equipped with deep enough tools for memory analysis that allow you to detail the contents of the Other section better than the standard settings menu.

To get started, you need to go to the device settings menu. Find About Phone and click on Warehouse. The system will do a quick analysis and give a color diagram. Click on the Other sector, you can often see a breakdown by file type, although the detail here is limited.

• 📱 Go to Settings. → Memory to run analysis.
• 🔍 Click on the color sector of the chart marked as “Other” or “System Data».
• 🗑️ Use the Clean Up button if the system suggests deleting temporary files.
• 📂 Check the Apps section by sorting them by size, as the cache is often counted in the total volume.

It's important to note that the built-in cleaner doesn't always see all the hidden folders. It works within its security rules to keep the files that are important to the system from being deleted, so if the Other partition size has decreased slightly after cleaning, a deeper approach will be needed.

Cleaning through USB debugging mode (ADB)

The most effective way to get to hidden files is using the Android Debug Bridge protocol (ADB). This method allows you to access the file system at a level close to the system level, bypassing the limitations of the GUI. USB.

The first step is to activate the hidden developer menu. Go to Settings → About Phone and quickly click 7 times on the MIUI Version (or OS Version). After the notification “You became a developer”, go back to the main settings menu, find Additional → For developers and turn on the USB Debugging Toggle.

adb shell pm clear com.android.cache

Once you connect your smartphone to your PC and install ADB drivers, you can execute a cache clearing command, but a more powerful tool is to use a command to delete temporary files in specific directories. Be extremely careful: improper use of ADB commands can lead to data loss.

⚠️ Note: Never use the rm command. -rf in the root directory or in the system folders, if you are not sure 100% Removing the system libraries will lead to a building block of the device.

There is also the possibility of viewing memory by specific processes through ADB. The adb shell dumpsys meminfo team will show detailed statistics on the use of RAM and permanent memory by each running process, which will help to identify the “voracious” application that inflates the “Other” section.

Analysis of files through third-party utilities

If you think it's too complicated to mess with the command line, Google Play's specialized analytics apps will come to the rescue, and programs like DiskUsage or Storage Analyzer build a visual map of the file system, showing which folders take up the most space.

Once you install this app and grant permissions, you'll see a folder tree, and you'll need to look for folders that have the names Android/data or Android/obb, and folders of specific applications (e.g. com.telegram.messenger), which often hide the cache or files folders that make up the volume of the Other.

Using these tools, you can manually delete the contents of the cache folders. For example, in Total Commander you can go along the /Android/data/ path, find the desired application and clean the cache folder. This action is safe for account data, but resets the settings inside the application and requires re-uploading the content.

Radical methods: Resetting and flashing

In cases where the Other partition is more than 50-60 GB and cannot be cleaned by standard methods, radical intervention may be required, often caused by file system errors or broken indexes of the database of media files, which the system cannot correctly count.

The most effective way is to completely reset to factory settings (Hard Reset).Be sure to back up all the important data to the cloud or to your computer before that, after reset, the phone will return to the state "out of the box", and the "Other" partition will occupy the minimum necessary volume.

Even if the reset doesn’t work (which is extremely rare), the problem can be the damage to the system partition, in which case only the flashing of the device through the computer using the Mi Flash Tool helps, which is guaranteed to clean all memory partitions and restore the integrity of the file system.

⚠️ Warning: Before performing a complete reset or flashing, make sure that the battery is at least 60% charged.Stop the data writing process may render the device unusable.

After returning to factory settings, it is recommended not to restore the backup of applications “wholesale”, but to install them again, which will prevent the return of old erroneous configuration files that could have caused the problem.

💡

Wipe Data is the only guaranteed way to remove the Other if it has grown due to file system errors, not real files.

Prevention of the growth of systemic debris

To prevent the problem of overflowing the Other section from returning, you need to introduce a habit of regular maintenance of the smartphone. Modern applications are prone to “appetite”, accumulating data without the user’s demand. Regular monitoring helps to keep the situation under control.

It is recommended to check the settings of messengers once a month. Telegram, for example, can enable automatic cache cleaning: Settings → Data and memory → Memory Use → Media Saving: 3 days. This will prevent the accumulation of gigabytes of images viewed.

• 📅 Make a rule to check the storage every two weeks.
• 🚫 Turn off auto-save media in gallery for work chats.
• 🔄 Update apps regularly through Google Play, as newer versions often contain memory leak fixes.
• 🗑️ Remove unused apps right away, don’t store them “just in case».

Also worth noting is the memory extension feature, which uses a portion of internal storage as virtual RAM, which, while it speeds up, can fragment the space, and if you have enough physical RAM (8GB or more), it's best to turn it off in the settings.

💡

Use the Memory Cleanup widget on the MIUI desktop to quickly access the garbage removal function. Starting a cleanup every 3-4 days prevents critical proliferation of temporary files.