How to see what memory is occupied on Xiaomi

Owners of Xiaomi, Redmi and Poco smartphones sooner or later face an annoying notification of a lack of space. The system may start to run slower and new applications will stop being installed. Understanding exactly where precious gigabytes have gone is the first step to optimizing the device.

In MIUI and the new HyperOS, file management mechanisms are quite transparent, but standard notifications often do not give the full picture. The user sees simply “memory is full”, not realizing whether the messenger cache, forgotten videos in the gallery or the system section “Other” is to blame.

This guide will help you analyze disk space in detail, and we will take a look at the standard diagnostic tools, hidden developer menu features, and proven safe cleaning methods that will not harm the stability of your smartphone.

Analysis through the standard "Security" application

The fastest and most affordable way to get primary information about the state of storage is to use an embedded system application. In Xiaomi shells, it is called "Security" and has a green icon with a shield.

Run the app and find the Cleanup icon. After scanning, the system will show the amount of junk files, but for deep analysis, click on the “Clear Memory” button or go to the “Memory” section (sometimes hidden in a three-dot menu or swipe up), here you will see a color diagram where the different colors are marked with applications, images, videos and system files.

⚠️ Warning: Do not use third-party aggressive accelerators from the Play Market if the standard tool works correctly. They often put extra load on the processor and show ads without giving real performance gains.

A detailed viewing allows you to see the top apps that take up the most space, and if you click on a particular program, like Telegram or Viber, you can go to manage its cache, which is a safe method, because the system itself will suggest that you delete temporary files without touching your personal correspondence or settings.

Detailed statistics in the storage settings

To get deeper into the file structure, you should go to system settings. The path may vary slightly depending on the Android version and shell, but the logic remains the same. Go to Settings and find the About Phone or Advanced Settings section.

You need a Memory (or Storage) item, which is more structured than a security application, and you'll see the exact separation between occupied and free space, and a list of categories: Apps, Images, Videos, Audio, Documents, and more.

And you should pay special attention to the App category, and if you click on it, you get a sorted list of all the programs that are installed, and it shows not only the size of the application itself, but also the amount of data that it stores, and it's often where the memory eaters are hiding, which have grown to a few gigabytes.

If you see memory packed with files of unknown format, try sorting the list by date of change to help identify recently downloaded heavy objects, and the Clean Recommendations feature is often available on this menu, which removes temporary ad ID and analytics files.

Discussion of the “Other” section and system files

One of the most puzzling categories for Xiaomi users is the “Other” section (sometimes labeled “System Files” or simply in gray on the diagram), which includes files that the system cannot uniquely classify as photos, music or standard documents.

Most often, the volume of this section is inflated:

• 📦 Cache of streaming services (Spotify, YouTube, Netflix), which is saved for offline listening.
• 📱 Heavy gaming data, including resources that are loaded after installation.
• 🗑️ Residual files of remote applications that have not been properly uninstalled.
• 📂 Temporary system or application update files that are not automatically deleted.

To clean this partition, it is not recommended to use root file managers without proper experience; the safest way to use the Deep Clean feature in a standard security application that can clean the cache of popular applications, and it also helps to clean the cache in the settings of specific “heavy” applications manually.

⚠️ Note: When manually cleaning folders through a file manager, never delete the contents of system directories, such as: Android/data or MIUI, if you're not sure about 100% This can cause a reset or a system malfunction.

Sometimes, the Other section may hide error logs (.log files) that take hundreds of megabytes to find and delete through the file manager, sorting files by size, and often finding files with the.log or.tmp extension is a positive result.

Analysis of messengers: Telegram, WhatsApp, Viber

The absolute leaders in memory consumption are messengers. Unlike the standard gallery, they store media files in their closed directories, and the standard cleaning of the phone may not affect them. Each messenger has its own characteristics of data storage.

Telegram handles the situation in the most elegant way possible. Go to Settings → Data and Memory → Memory Use. Here you will see the exact size of the cache. By clicking Clear Cache, you will free up gigabytes of space, while all your photos and videos will remain in the cloud and re-upload as needed.

WhatsApp and Viber have a different mechanism: media files are often duplicated in a shared gallery.

• 🗑️ On WhatsApp: Settings → Data and storage → Storage management.There you can delete files larger than 5 MB or clear chats with specific contacts.
• 🧹 In Viber: More → Settings → Memory. The app will prompt you to delete cache and old media files.

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Turn on the “Cache Autodeletion” function in Telegram settings and set a 3-day or week deadline to prevent the proliferation of garbage in the future without your involvement.

They won’t disappear from the chat, but will only take up space when you re-watch.

Use of Disk Analyzers and Third-Party Utilities

If standard MIUI tools don't seem informative enough, you can use dedicated disk space analyzers, and these applications visualize memory as a block map, where the square size corresponds to the file size.

One of the most popular and secure utilities is DiskUsage, or Files by Google, which scans internal memory and shows the hierarchical structure, and you'll immediately see which folder takes up the most space, even if it's hidden deep in the system.

The process of working with such utilities is simple:

1. Install the app from the official Google Play store.
2. Provide access to files (permission is required for scanning).
3. Select internal memory (/storage/emulated/0).
4. Click on the largest block on the map to “fall” inside the folder and find the culprit.

Using third-party analyzers, you can detect forgotten folders from remote games or photo editing applications that store heavy source projects.

Radical measures: resetting and formatting

In situations where memory is occupied by system debris that cannot be removed by standard methods, or the “Other” partition takes up an illogically large volume (for example, 20 GB on an empty phone), a more radical intervention may be required.

The first step is to reset the settings to the factory, and before that, it's critical to back up your data completely through your Mi Cloud or Google Drive account, and to transfer your photos and videos to your computer. → The phone. → Resetting settings → Erase all data.

This operation will bring the phone back out of the box by removing all apps, accounts, and files, and often after such a reset, the Other partition volume returns to normal as system error logs and broken file system indexes are cleared.

⚠️ Warning: Before resetting, be sure to remove the memory card SD (if you have one, log out of your Mi Account so that activation blocking does not work (FRP), which will require entering a password from the account after rebooting.

Even if a full reset didn’t work and the memory fills up on its own immediately after installing the minimum of applications, it could indicate a physical degradation of flash memory, in which case the software methods are powerless, and a component replacement at the service center is required.

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Regularly restarting your smartphone (at least once a week) helps the system automatically clean temporary files and prevent the accumulation of system debris.