Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphone owners often face sudden reports of memory shortages, and detailed storage analysis reveals that the mysterious “Other” category is the lion’s share of the space, which can grow to tens of gigabytes, taking up 40-50% of the total available volume, making it impossible to install new apps or shoot high-resolution video.
MIUI and its new version of HyperOS classify as “Other” all data that is not standard media files, applications or documents, including temporary files, messenger cache, remnants of remote programs, error logs and streaming services, and understanding the nature of these files is the first step to freeing up useful space on your device.
In this article, we will explore proven cleanup methods without using third-party software, which often only exacerbates the situation with intrusive advertising, learn how to safely remove system debris, find hidden folders and prevent the “Other” partition from re-growing in the future.
Analysis of the composition of the “Other” category
Before we start radical action, we need to understand what exactly occupies space. The category "Other" is not one file, but a collection of data. Most often, the volume is inflated by messengers like Telegram or WhatsApp, which store the videos and photos viewed in cache without displaying them in the gallery.
Streaming services and browsers also make up a significant portion, and if you listened to music online or watched videos through a browser, temporary files could be saved in system memory, and navigation map data and residues after a firmware update were another source.
- 📱 Social network cache and instant messengers (videos, stickers, voice).
- 📦 Residual files of remote applications and games.
- 🗺️ Offline maps and navigation data.
- 📜 System Logs and Error Reports.
⚠️ Warning: Do not attempt to delete files from system folders manually through the file manager unless you know their exact purpose. MIUI.
Why doesn’t the volume of the “Other” decrease immediately?
Use of the built-in "Security" application
The safest and first method to try is using Xiaomi’s regular tool.Security has a built-in cleaning module that can find unnecessary files without affecting important system components.
Run the app and select Cleanup. The system will scan and suggest removing the garbage. However, standard cleaning is often superficial. For a deeper analysis, click on the Recycle Bin icon or go to Deep Cleanup.
Here you'll see a more detailed list: large files, similar images and, importantly, application data. Carefully review the list of large files — often there are forgotten archives or videos that the system mistakenly recorded in "Other".
☑️ Checking with built-in scanner
Pay special attention to the section "Application Data", where you can safely clear the cache of heavy programs. Don't confuse cache cleaning with data cleaning: the first will delete temporary files, the second will reset the application to factory settings.
Manual cleaning of the cache of messengers and social networks
Telegram is often the main culprit for memory overflows, and unlike other messengers, it stores the entire history of media files on the device unless you set up auto-delete, creating giant folders in the Other section.
To clean up, open Telegram settings, go to Data and Memory → Memory Use. Press Clear Cache. You can set up automatic cleanup, such as deleting files older than 3 days or 1 week.
Similar to YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, these apps cache the videos you've watched to quickly scrolle through the tape. Clean up is better done through the app management menu in your phone settings: Settings → Apps → All apps → Select the app → Memory → Clear the cache.
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Set up an automatic cache cleanup on Telegram, which will prevent the accumulation of gigabytes of garbage in the future and eliminate the need for manual cleaning.
Remember browsers. Chrome, UC Browser or the built-in Mi browser also accumulate terabytes of temporary data. In the settings of each browser, look for the Privacy or History section and clear the cache and cookies.
Find and delete hidden folders through the file manager
Sometimes, automated tools don’t see specific folders left behind by remote games or specific programs, and this will require a file manager with access to internal storage, such as MI Explorer or Files by Google.
Enable the display of hidden files in the Explorer settings (usually a tick in the Hidden Files menu).
- 📂 Android/data — This is where the caches of games and applications are stored.
- 📂 DCIM/.thumbnails — A sketch folder that can weigh several gigabytes.
- 📂 MIUI/gallery/cloud — Local copies of the cloud gallery, if you do not use them.
Be extremely careful in the Android folder. Deleting the obb or data folder for active applications will result in loss of progress in games or reset program settings.
| folder | What does it contain? | Can I remove it? |
|---|---|---|
| .thumbnails | Photo and video miniatures | Yeah (safe) |
| MIUI/debug_log | Logs of system debugging | Yeah (if not debugging) |
| Tencent/MicroMsg | WeChat cash | Careful (via appendix) |
| Android/obb | Game data files | No (dump games) |
Cleaning through Developer Mode and ADB
For advanced users who have a critically large space-consuming Other that is not removed by standard methods, there is a way to debug via USB. This method requires a connection to a computer and installing ADB drivers.
First, activate Developer Mode: Go to Settings → About Phone and 7 times click on MIUI Version. Then in the Additional → For Developers menu, turn on USB Debugging.
Connect your phone to your PC and start the command line. To clear the cache of all applications, you can immediately use the command:
adb shell pm trim-caches 999999999This command forcibly trims the app cache, freeing up space, and you can also use the command to delete temporary system files, but this requires superuser rights (Root), which are difficult to obtain on modern Xiaomi and not recommended for ordinary users.
⚠️ Attention: Use ADB-Introducing the wrong command can lead to the removal of system components or resetting the phone settings.
If you are not sure about your actions, it is better to limit yourself to cleaning through settings or specialized software like PC Suite from Xiaomi, which has the function of cleaning garbage in the interface.
Radical measures: reset to factory settings
If neither method worked and the Other category continues to run 30-40GB, it may have accumulated errors or broken indexes in the file system, in which case a complete reset is the case.
Before the procedure, be sure to back up important data to the Mi Cloud cloud or your computer. Go to Settings → About Phone → Reset → Erase all data.
After resetting, the phone will return to the “out of the box” state. The “Other” category will be minimal (about 1-2 GB). When restoring applications from the backup, try not to restore the data of messengers completely if they store a huge archive of correspondence that you do not need.
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A complete reset is the only way to ensure that you remove system debris accumulated over the years if the file system is damaged.
Once turned on, the system will calibrate the storage, and in the first hours of use, the volume of the Other may grow slightly, which is a normal process for creating system files and cache.
Prevention of memory overflow
To keep the problem from returning in a month, make sure you keep cleaning regularly. Check the storage once a week. Use the Cleanup feature in the security app before installing major game updates.
Set up cloud sync for photos and videos with automatic removal of local copies after upload. Google Photos has a Free Place feature that does just that.
- 🔄 Update apps regularly – developers often optimize cache storage.
- 🚫 Turn off auto-save statuses on WhatsApp and Instagram Stories.
- 📉 Use the “Lite” version of the app if your phone has less than 64GB of storage.
Following these simple rules will keep Xiaomi’s smartphone in a fast state and avoid a sudden shortage of space at the most inopportune moment.