How to delete photos on Xiaomi: a complete cleanup guide

Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO are all known for their excellent cameras, which inevitably overflows internal memory. Owners often face a situation where the drive is full of pictures and the system begins to demand space. The standard deletion process seems obvious, but the MIUI or HyperOS shell has its own features of storing media files.

Misdeleting files can leave them in hidden folders or take up space in cloud storage. Understanding the structure of the Android file system on Xiaomi devices allows you not only to erase images, but also to do it efficiently, freeing up gigabytes of space.

In this guide, we will cover all the ways to clean up, from a standard gallery to deep cleaning of system caches, learn how to manage albums, work with hidden pictures, and what to do if a file refuses to be deleted by standard methods.

Delete photos through a standard gallery

The most obvious and common way to work with media files is to use the built-in Gallery app, which is pre-installed on all devices of the brand and offers a user-friendly interface for managing the collection, where files are not instantly deleted, but moved to a special shopping cart, allowing you to restore them in case of an error.

To do this, you need to open the app and go to the Photo tab, where you can select a single image with a long press or activate multiple selection mode by swiping your finger across the screen, and after selecting the right frames, a toolbar will appear at the bottom of the display, where the basket icon is located.

• 📸 Click on the basket icon to move selected images to temporary storage.
• ♻️ For complete removal, go to the "Albums" section and find the folder "Deleted".
• ⏳ Files are stored in the basket for 30 days, after which they are deleted automatically.

⚠️ Note: On some versions of the firmware MIUI The Remote folder can take up space in the Other section. If the memory is critically over, clear the cart immediately.

You can also delete entire albums if they're not system-based, and if you try to delete a system album like Camera or Screenshots, it will only remove the content, not the folder structure itself, and it will protect the operating system from bugs in the application.

Working with file manager and hidden folders

Sometimes the standard gallery doesn't display all files, especially if you're talking about instant messenger shots or screenshots saved to non-standard directories, and in such cases, the System Explorer (File Manager) comes to the rescue, and this tool allows you to see the real structure of the directories on the device.

To find "heavy" or hidden photos, go to the root directory of internal memory, focus on the DCIM folder where the camera shots are stored, and the Pictures folder, which is often stored by social networks and browsers, and these directories may contain subfolders that do not appear in the general gallery stream.

To access hidden files, you need to activate the appropriate mode in the Explorer settings, usually through the application settings menu, where you need to switch the slider "Show hidden files", and then you will see folders starting from a point, such as.thumbnails, which can occupy a significant amount of space.

Deletion through the file manager is irrevocable unless backup is configured. Unlike a gallery, a conductor often doesn't send files to the bin, but erases them immediately. Be extremely careful when working with system folders marked with a lock or gear icon.

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Use size sorting in the file manager to quickly find the folders with the “heavy” photos and videos that take up the most space.

Cleaning up cloud storage Mi Cloud and Google Photos

Modern Xiaomi smartphones sync media files with cloud services by default, which creates a situation where the user deletes a photo from the phone, but it continues to hang in the cloud, or vice versa - deleting in the cloud erases the file from the device. It is important to understand the difference between local storage and the cloud Mi Cloud or Google Photos.

If you're syncing with Mi Cloud, the remote photo first enters the cloud cart, and to make room on the server, you go to your Mi Account settings through your browser or security app, and there's a separate section for cloud data management where you can do a massive cleanup.

Google Photos is similar, but there's an important feature: the "Free Space" feature in the Google Photos app automatically removes images from the device that have already been successfully uploaded to the cloud, a safe way to quickly clear the internal memory of the smartphone by saving access to the archive over the Internet.

⚠️ Before clearing the cloud, make sure that important photos are saved to your computer or external hard drive.Recovering data from the cloud after cleaning the cart completely is not possible.

Delete Undeletable and System Files

Users often encounter a problem when a certain photo or album refuses to delete, which may be due to a file system error, corrupting the file metadata, or because a file is being used by some process in the background, in which case a standard click on the basket does not work.

The first step in solving this problem is to reboot the device, which is a simple but effective method that completes all the hanging processes and can unlock the file to delete. If the reboot didn't work, try renaming the file or folder through the file manager and then deleting them.

In more complex cases, when the file is part of the app cache (for example, an avatar in messengers or thumbnails in the gallery), cleaning the data of the Gallery application itself will help. To do this, go to Settings → Apps → All apps → Gallery → Clear. Select “Clean the cache” so that you do not lose settings, but reset temporary files.

There is also a method of connecting a smartphone to a computer in file transfer mode (MTP). Sometimes the PC sees the file system differently than the phone itself and allows you to remove the "stuck" object through a standard Windows Explorer or macOS. This bypasses software locks of the Android shell.

Cleaning of thumbnails and cache of thumbnails

The.thumbnails folder is a system directory in which Android stores reduced copies of all photos and videos for quick scroll through the gallery, which can be as large as several gigabytes, especially if you haven’t cleaned your phone in a long time or have a lot of videos.

It's safe to delete the contents of this folder, and it automatically recreates the thumbnails you need the next time you open the gallery, but it's going to take time and processor resources, so it's best to do this when the phone is connected to charging and Wi-Fi.

• 🗑️ Find the file. DCIM/.thumbnails through a file manager with permissions to display hidden files.
• 📉 Deleting this folder can instantly free up 1 to 5 GB of memory.
• 🔄 After cleaning, the gallery may run slower for the first few minutes.

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The.thumbnails folder doesn't contain the original photo, it's just a cache to display, and you can delete it to free up space.

Some users are trying to prevent this folder from growing again by creating a file with the same name instead of the deleted folder. This is an old trick that works unstable on new versions of Android and MIUI and can lead to errors in the work of the gallery.

Automation and regular memory hygiene

To keep the memory problem from returning, you need to set up an automatic cleaning. Xiaomi's built-in Security app on smartphones has a powerful tool called "Clean Up." It analyzes the device for similar photos, screenshots and large files, suggesting that they be deleted.

Using this tool regularly, at least once a week, will help keep things in order, and it's also helpful to set up automatic uploads to the cloud and then deletes from your device, making your phone an easy terminal to access the huge archive that's physically on the servers.

Remember that overflowing memory (over 90% fullness) has a negative impact on the speed of the entire smartphone. Flash memory starts to work slower when writing new data if there is minimal free space, so removing excess photos is not just a way to clean up the device, but also a way to speed up the work of the gadget.