How to Remove “Other” in Xiaomi Storage: The Complete Guide

Xiaomi smartphone owners often face the unpleasant situation of having the device’s memory filled up and the system showing that the lion’s share of space is occupied by the “Other” section.This mysterious section can grow to 10-20 GB or more, taking up a significant part of the internal drive. Users are lost in guessing what exactly is stored there and why standard cleaning tools often prove powerless.

The Other section of MIUI is a system category where Android puts files that it can’t classify as standard: photos, videos, audio, apps or documents. This basket includes messenger cache, remnants of remote programs, temporary update files, error logs and streaming service data. Understanding the nature of this data is the first step to a successful cleanup.

Ignoring overflows in this section can lead to a critical slowdown in Xiaomi, trouble installing updates, and even system failures. In this article, we will detail safe and effective ways to free up space, using both built-in tools and third-party tools for deep file system analysis.

The nature of the “Other” section: what is stored there

To effectively combat space shortage, you need to understand the structure of the data, the system classifies files by extensions and storage paths, and if the file does not have a standard extension or is in the hidden folder of the application, it automatically goes to the Other category, which is a kind of gray area of the Android file system.

The main occupants of this section are usually:

• 📦 Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber store thousands of temporary files, stickers and viewed media that the system does not see as “Photos” or “Video».
• 🎬 Offline streaming content: Downloaded movies on YouTube, Netflix or music on Spotify are often hidden in the app system folders.
• 🗑️ Residual files: After removing games or heavy apps, folders with settings and temporary data are often left behind.
• 🔄 System Logs and Reports: Debugging files and error logs that accumulate over months.

⚠️ Warning: Don't try to manually delete files from system folders through a Explorer without understanding their purpose. Deleting critical libraries can lead to a "bricking" device or endless reboot.

It's important to note that partition volume is dynamic, it can grow dramatically after a system upgrade or heavy play installation, and then slowly decrease as the system works if automatic optimization is enabled, but in MIUI, this mechanism often works incorrectly, requiring user intervention.

Basic cleaning with built-in MIUI facilities

The first and safest step is to use a regular Cleanup tool, which, while simple, can remove a significant amount of debris that the system has identified as safe to remove, a method that is suitable for regular maintenance of the device.

To start the process, go to the Security app (green icon with a shield) and select Clean up. The system will analyze the device and suggest deleting temporary files. However, the standard mode often skips the deep cache of applications.

For a deeper cleaning, look inside the same menu for the “Delete Apps” or “Manage Storage” section, and see which programs take up the most space. Often, it turns out that a single messenger takes up 5 GB, even though it weighs only 100 MB. Deleting and re-installing such an application (after backing up chats) can instantly free up gigabytes.

You should also check the settings of the storage itself. Go to Settings → About Phone → Storage. This is where the system visualizes the memory. If you click on the “Other” category, Xiaomi may suggest clearing the system cache or removing old backups.

Deep cleaning through application settings

If standard cleaning didn't work, you need to move to manually managing the cache of specific applications, and that's where the bulk of the data in the Other section is hidden, which takes longer, but produces the most accurate results.

The algorithm of actions is as follows:

• 📱 Open Settings and go to the Application section.
• 🔍 Select All Apps and sort the list by size of space occupied.
• 🧹 Click on the “heavy” application (such as a browser or social network) and select Clear Cache.
• ⚠️ Use the Clean Everything button (or “Reset”) only if you are ready to log in again in the application.

Pay special attention to video and music watching apps. On YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, cache can reach tens of gigabytes. The apps themselves often have settings for automatic cache clearing, which is more convenient than doing it through Android settings.

Once you clear the cache of the most voluminous applications, restart your smartphone, so that the Android file system can recalculate the indexes and correctly display the vacant space, and sometimes changes are only visible after the device restarts.

Use of Third-Party File Managers

The standard MIUI Explorer has limited functionality for analyzing “hidden” files. For professional cleaning, it is recommended to use specialized utilities such as Total Commander, Files by Google or X-plore File Manager.

With these managers, you can find folders with names like.temp, cache, or tmp at the root of internal memory, often storing hundreds of megabytes of files left behind by careless software developers.

The table below shows common folders that can be manually cleaned:

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Use the Storage Analyzer feature in Files by Google, which visually shows the largest files, even if they are scattered across different folders, which makes it easier to find memory eaters.

When working with file managers, enable the display of hidden files (usually a tick in the Explorer settings menu) to see files starting from a dot that often take up space in the Other section.

Radical methods: resetting and flashing

If the software methods fail and the Other section continues to grow, it may be that the file system has accumulated errors or corrupted system indexes, in which case a complete reset helps, which is an extreme measure requiring prior backup of all important data.

Reset will return the phone to factory status by removing all user data and, accordingly, all debris. Go to Settings → About Phone → Reset → Erase all data. The process takes 10-15 minutes.

⚠️ Warning: Before reset, make sure to check if sync with Mi Cloud or Google Photos is enabled. After reset, it will be impossible to restore deleted photos without a backup copy.

An alternative to a full reset is to clean the cache partition via Recovery Mode. To do this, turn off your phone, press the Volume+ button and Power before the Mi logo appears. From the Recovery menu, select Wipe Data → Wipe Cache. This will not affect your personal files, but will clean up system debris.

In some cases, especially on older Xiaomi models with eMMC memory type, flashing the device through the Mi Flash Tool with the choice of the “Clean all” option helps. This completely rewrites the system partition, eliminating any software errors of data accumulation.

Preventing overcrowding of storage

To keep the problem from returning, you need to develop habits of proper smartphone use: regular prevention takes a couple of minutes a week, but saves hours to combat memory shortages in the future.

Basic rules of prevention:

• 🔄 Regular Update: Install Updates MIUI, Because they often come out with patches that correct memory leaks.
• 🧹 Weekly cleaning: Once a week, run a standard cleaning and check the cache Telegram/WhatsApp.
• ☁️ Cloud Services: Set up automatic upload of photos and videos to the cloud, freeing up local space.

Also, limit the background activity of applications. In the battery settings, prevent unnecessary programs from running in the background, which will not only save charge, but also reduce the number of temporary files created.

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The most effective way to deal with the “Other” section is not to search for a magic button, but to regularly monitor the cache of messengers and streaming services, which are the main sources of garbage.

Remember that over 90% memory occupancy dramatically reduces the speed of your memory controller. Try to keep at least 15-20% of your total storage capacity free for Android to run smoothly.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)