How to Clean Xiaomi Phone Memory: The Complete Guide

Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO are all known for their speed, but over time, even the most powerful devices start to slow down, and the main reason for this is overflowing internal memory and accumulation of system debris. If your phone starts to slow down, open apps for a long time or suddenly close them, then it’s time to do the general cleaning.

In Android and the MIUI or HyperOS shell, there are many hidden folders where apps put temporary files, logs of errors and remnants of deleted programs. These data are not visible to the average user, but they take up gigabytes of precious space. In this article, we will discuss not only standard cleaning methods, but also advanced ways to free up space available to owners of smartphones of the Chinese brand.

Before we go to radical measures like factory resets, it's worth trying a full-scale cleanup with regular means. It's safe and requires no special knowledge. However, it's important to understand that simply uninstalling applications doesn't always remove all of their traces. Cache and residual files can linger for years if they're not forcibly deleted through settings or a file manager.

Use of the built-in "Security" application

The first and most obvious tool that's already installed on your device is the System Security app, which was developed by Xiaomi engineers specifically to optimize system performance and clean up garbage. Run a label with a shield and lightning on your desktop to start analyzing.

Once you start, click on the Cleanup button. The system scans the device for temporary files, app residues, and ads. You'll see a list of categories that occupy the space. Be careful: there may be files from messengers that you might want to save. Clearing the cache is completely secure, but deleting downloads or large files requires verification.

There's also a Deep Clean section inside the app, and this tool analyzes the contents of folders in more detail, finding duplicate photos that are not used. APK-Installers and empty folders, which allows you to free up a few hundred megabytes of data that are often overlooked by standard procedures.

⚠️ Note: Before using the Deep Clean feature, carefully review the file list. The system algorithm can flag important documents or rare image formats that you do not want to lose as trash.

Regular use of the built-in cleaner helps keep the system on track, but it’s worth remembering that this app works on a surface level and doesn’t always reach hidden social media cache sites like Telegram or Viber, which store media files in their private directories.

Manual cleaning through application settings

Social media and instant messengers occupy the largest amount of space on modern smartphones, apps like TikTok, Instagram and Telegram cache every video and image they watch to load them faster when they are reopened, and over time, this cache can reach 5-10 gigabytes.

To clear the cache of a particular application, go to the Settings menu and select the App. Find a "heavy" app like YouTube. Inside the app menu, you'll see a Clean or Delete button. It's important to distinguish between these two actions: cleaning the cache will only delete temporary files, and deleting the data will reset the application to a "post-install" state, which will require re-authorization.

• 📱 Go to Settings. → Annexes → All applications.
• 🔍 Find the app that takes up the most space (usually social networks).
• 🗑️ Press Memory and select Clear Cache.
• 🔄 Repeat the procedure for 3-5 heavyweight.

Special attention should be paid to the gallery and cloud services. If you have Google Photos or Xiaomi Cloud enabled, check the Recycle Bin folder. Deleted photos can be stored there for up to 30 days, taking up space, and also check the DCIM folder for high-resolution videos that you accidentally captured and forgot to delete.

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Use the “Free Space” feature in Google Photos – it will automatically delete from the device those pictures that are already uploaded to the cloud and saved in original quality.

Remember browsers. Chrome, Mi Browser, and other browsers accumulate history and cache of pages. If you rarely use your browsing history, you can delete it through the browser's own settings in the Privacy or History section, which will not only free up space, but also increase privacy2.

Storage analysis and search for large files

Often, users don't know what exactly is taking up space on their device. The MIUI shell has a handy built-in analyzer. Open Explorer and click on the folder icon or select Storage Analysis on the menu. The system will build a memory distribution diagram.

Here you'll see a breakdown by file type: videos, images, documents, applications. Often it turns out that half of the memory is occupied by video files from messengers that were received in group chats. WhatsApp and Telegram files are better cleaned through the settings of the applications themselves, since they have their own folder structure that only they understand.

Pay attention to the folder. MIUI It's at the root of the internal memory, and it often has a folder inside it. debug_log, If you're not a developer and you don't send bug reports to engineers, you can delete the contents of that folder painlessly. Also check the backup folder, which sometimes leaves behind old system backups that weigh several gigabytes.

⚠️ Note: Do not delete.obb and.data files from your Android folder if you want to keep the progress of games and heavy apps running.

For more in-depth analysis, third-party tools like Files by Google or DiskUsage can visualize memory as a block map, where you can immediately see which file or folder takes up the most space, and this can find forgotten archives or movies accidentally downloaded six months ago.

Cleaning through the Engineering Menu and ADB

For advanced users who want to make the most of their Xiaomi, there is an access to the engineering menu. This is a hidden part of the system designed to test hardware, but it also allows you to see the actual memory use of the process. Be careful: changing unknown settings here can lead to unstable work.

To enter the engineering menu, open the Phone app and type ##6484##. In the CIT menu that opens, you can check the memory status, but it is not recommended to clean it from here, since this is a diagnostic menu. A more effective method for cleaning system debris is using USB debugging and a computer.

Connect your phone to your PC, turn on USB debugging in the developer menu, and use the ADB command to remove system debris. This requires having an ADB Driver installed on your computer. The command allows you to remove system applications that cannot be removed in the usual way, freeing up the system partition.

adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.miui.systemAdSolution

This command, for example, disables MIUI system ads, which also take up space and resources. However, using ADB requires accuracy. A mistake in the name of the package can cause the bell or camera to stop working. Always check the name of the package online before deleting.

If you're not a confident PC user, you'd better limit yourself to cleaning through the developer's settings. There's a Background Process Limit on the Developer menu. Putting a limit on 2-3 processes will help free up RAM, which will indirectly affect your speed and reduce the number of temporary files you create in the background.

Removing duplicates and unnecessary applications

Over the years, the gallery has accumulated many duplicates. You could accidentally take a picture of a document twice or save the same picture from the Internet to different folders. Xiaomi's built-in tool can find similar images, but for careful cleaning, it is better to use specialized duplicate scanner applications.

As for apps, the rule is simple: if you haven't used the app in the last 3 months, delete it. Even if the program isn't running, it may have active background services that consume resources. MIUI has a dual app feature that creates a copy of the social network. If you're not using the second account, be sure to delete the clone, as it takes up the same amount of space as the main application.

• 📉 Remove the games you stopped playing (they weigh the most).
• 📺 Unsubscribe from channels in messengers, where only advertising.
• 📂 Move the photo and video to SD-map.
• 🧹 Remove old voice recordings of the recorder.

Streaming services like Netflix, Spotify or Yandex.Music are worth a special attention. They often upload high-quality offline content, check the download settings in these apps, and delete old playlists or seasons of shows you've already watched.

Prevention and optimization of the system

To avoid asking yourself how to clean your memory every month, make a preventive cleaning habit. Xiaomi's modern phones allow you to set up automatic cleaning. The Security app allows you to turn on the "Clean When Locked" option or set up a cleanup schedule.

Also worth reviewing is storage habits. Photograph in HEIF (if the camera supports) format, which takes up half the space of a standard JPG at the same quality. In Xiaomi camera settings, this option is often hidden in advanced image format settings.

Use cloud storage. Google Drive, OneDrive or Yandex.Disk can automatically upload photos and delete them from the device, leaving only thumbnails, which creates the illusion that all photos are in place, but physically they take up space on the Internet, not in the memory of the phone.

⚠️ Attention: Before formatting SD-Make sure to back up contacts and important documents by card or complete internal memory cleaning. It is almost impossible to recover deleted files without backup on modern smartphones with encryption.

Regularly restarting your phone (at least once a week) also helps the system reset accumulated memory management errors and complete the hanging processes. Combined with manual garbage cleaning, this gives a tangible performance boost even on older Redmi and POCO models.

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A comprehensive approach: the combination of automatic cleaning with regular means, manual deletion of the cache of heavy applications and transfer of media files to the cloud allows you to free up to 40% of memory without losing important data.

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