How to clean Vatsap from garbage and make room on Xiaomi Redmi

Owners of Xiaomi Redmi smartphones sooner or later face one of the most annoying problems: sudden notification of a memory shortage. Most often the culprit is WhatsApp messenger, which accumulates gigabytes of data for years, stealthily eating precious space. Android system, especially the shell MIUI, has its own features of file storage, which makes standard cleaning methods often ineffective.

The accumulated digital debris not only takes up space, but can also slow down the device, cause lags when opening dialogs, or even cause the application to refuse to accept new messages. Understanding the folder structure in Xiaomi Redmi and knowing the specific paths to data allows you to conduct a deep cleanup that is not accessible to the average user. In this article, we will examine all aspects of freeing up space, from built-in tools to manually deleting hidden files.

It's important to approach the process systematically so that you don't accidentally delete important documents or photos that you really need. We'll look at safe methods that are guaranteed to return free space without disrupting the system. Competent cleaning is not just removing pictures, but a set of measures to optimize storage.

Analysis of the occupied space in the settings of the smartphone

Before we start taking drastic measures, we need to determine exactly how much space the app takes up and what file types prevail.Redmi’s MIUI-enclosed smartphones have a powerful built-in memory analysis tool that users often ignore. Go to Settings → Memory or use the standard Security app to see a detailed breakdown by category.

The system will show the volume of the application itself, and the amount of user data, which includes media files, databases and cache. It is user data in WhatsApp that grows to giant sizes, since the messenger by default stores all the received images and videos in the phone gallery. Automatic saving is the main enemy of free memory on modern smartphones.

Notice the difference between the size of the app and the size of the data. If the app itself weighs 200MB and the data is 15GB, the problem lies in media content. In this section, you can also see which chats take up the most space, which will help prioritize the cleanup.

Do not ignore the "Other" section in memory analysis, as it often hides temporary files and remnants of deleted messages. MIUI sometimes incorrectly displays the real size of folders, so visual inspection through the file manager is the next must-do step.

⚠️ Note: Do not attempt to clear data through the Clear All Data button in your application settings unless you want to lose your email and account, which is equivalent to deleting the application and reinstalling it.

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Accurate memory analysis allows you to understand what exactly (video, photo or documents) takes up the most space, and plan for further cleaning.

Using WhatsApp's built-in data storage

The safest and most effective way to start cleaning is to use the built-in storage management tool inside the WhatsApp app itself, which allows you to delete files without leaving the messenger and see the context of each item. Open WhatsApp, go to Settings → Data and Storage → Storage Management.

So here you'll see a list of chats, sorted by the amount of space you're using, and if you click on any one of them, you can go through all the attachments in detail, photos, videos, voice messages and documents, and you can select files from multiple dialogs, which makes it much faster.

• 🗑️ Large files: At the top of the list, files larger than 5MB are usually displayed. Deleting old videos from this category instantly frees up gigabytes.
• 📅 Sort by date: You can select files received "For All Time" or "Older Year" to remove long-distant content.
• 🔊 Voice messages: It's often forgotten that long voices take up space, too. They can be deleted en masse if they're no longer needed.

The advantage of this method is that it automatically updates the messenger database to prevent indexing errors, but it does not delete copies of files that may have remained in the Android system folders if autosave was previously enabled in the gallery.

Manual cleaning through the file manager on MIUI

For Xiaomi Redmi owners, the standard File Manager is a powerful tool in the hands of a knowledgeable user. Automatic cleaners often don't get to the corners of the file system where duplicate statuses and temporary files hide. Go to the Internal Storage for manual garbage search.

The key is to find the Android folder → media → com.whatsapp → WhatsApp. This is where the newer versions of Android (11 and above) store the main content. In older versions of MIUI, the folder could simply be called WhatsApp at the root of the internal storage. Inside you are interested in the Media and Databases subfolders.

Pay special attention to the Statuses folder, which automatically saves all the contact statuses you viewed, even if you didn't save them manually, these files weigh a little, but they number in the thousands, which adds up to a significant amount of volume, and also check the Private folder, where hidden media files go.

Databases stores backups of correspondence. If you have backup set up in Google Drive, local copies from past dates can be ruthlessly deleted, leaving only the latest. Files with names like msgstore-2023-10-05.1.db.crypt14 are old backups taking up space.

⚠️ Note: When manually deleting files, make sure you don’t delete the Backups folder completely if you plan to recover correspondence without using the Google cloud.

Using a file extension search in MIUI Explorer, you can find all the video files (.mp4,.mkv) or archives (.zip,.rar) that came through WhatsApp and sort them by size, which helps you find the heavyweights that are lost in the back of the folders.

Set up automatic saves and exceptions

To prevent the memory overflow from returning in a month, you need to configure the download options for media files correctly. WhatsApp is set to auto-save all photos and videos to the phone gallery, which creates duplicates: one copy in the messenger database, the second in the general gallery MIUI.

Go to Settings → Chats and find the Media Visibility switch. If you turn it off, new photos and videos will stop appearing in the phone gallery, remaining only inside the application. This will not make room right now, but will prevent duplicates from growing in the future.

It is also critical to set exceptions for specific groups and contacts. In Settings → Chats → Autosave, you can select specific chats and prevent them from automatically downloading media, especially for workgroups where heavy presentations or videos are constantly being dropped.

• 📵 Disconnect for all: The most radical method is to ban auto-save globally for all contacts.
• 👥 Point setting: Leave auto-save only for selected contacts (family, close friends).
• 📶 Wi-Fi Download: Make sure that the Data and Storage section restricts media downloads to Wi-Fi only so you don’t waste traffic.

Once you change the settings, the old files won't go away, but the new ones won't clog the system, which is a preventive measure that's necessary to keep order on your smartphone.

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Use Archiving for rarely used chats, which won't remove them, but will remove them from the main list and reduce the load on the application indexing.

Comparison of cleaning methods: efficiency and risks

Different ways of freeing up space have different levels of efficiency and security, and to help you choose the best option, we have prepared a comparative table of methods available on Xiaomi Redmi.

As you can see from the table, manual removal through the conductor is the best result because it allows you to get to system debris that other methods ignore. However, this method requires care. Third-party applications often show ads or remove the wrong things, so using them on MIUI is not recommended.

A complete reset only makes sense if the messenger database is damaged and swelled to an abnormal size that cannot be reduced by standard means. 95% of the time, a combination of the first two methods is enough.

Cleaning the cache and temporary files of the system

In addition to user files, WhatsApp creates a huge amount of temporary cache that speeds up the application but becomes redundant over time. Cache includes thumbnails of images, temporary copies of files sent and utility logs. Cache cleaning is a secure operation that does not affect your correspondence.

To clean up, go to Settings → Apps → All Apps → WhatsApp → Storage. There you will see two buttons: Clear (or Clear cache) and Clear all data. You are only interested in the first button. Clicking on Clear all data will result in a full logout and deletion of correspondence.

Xiaomi smartphones also use the built-in Security > Cleanup app, which finds residual files that may have been left behind after updating the messenger or changing the Android version, and running this feature regularly helps keep the system on track.

Remember that once the cache is cleared, the app can run a little slower on its first run, because it will need to regenerate thumbnails. This is normal behavior that will pass quickly.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)