How to Remove Images and Videos from Xiaomi: The Complete Guide

Owners of Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO smartphones often face a shortage of space. Multimedia files, such as photos and videos, become the main cause of memory overflow. When storage is clogged, the device starts to run slower, and cameras and applications can stop functioning correctly, which is why the question of how to delete images and videos on Xiaomi becomes critical to maintaining the performance of the gadget.

Modern MIUI and HyperOS shells offer many built-in tools for managing files. You can delete photos one at a time, highlight entire albums, or use smart sorting to find duplicates. It is important to understand the difference between removing from the cloud and erasing from a physical drive so you don't accidentally lose important points. In this article, we will explore all the ways to clean up memory, from the standard Gallery to advanced methods through Explorer.

Don't ignore the regular cleaning of junk files. Android accumulates thumbnails and deleted copies that take up space for a long time. A competent approach to removing media content will allow you to free up gigabytes of space without installing third-party applications. Let's look Step-by-step how to effectively manage the library of your images.

Deletion through the standard Gallery app

The most obvious and affordable way to delete unnecessary files is to use the Gallery app preinstalled, which is ideal for selectively deleting or working with specific albums. The application interface is intuitive, allowing you to quickly find the right frames. When you delete a large number of files, the system can request confirmation of the operation to prevent accidental loss of data.

To delete one or more pictures, you need to open the app and go to browse mode. In the upper right corner, there is often a select button that allows you to mark the desired objects. After highlighting, you will see a toolbar where the basket icon is located, clicking on it will move the files to temporary storage.

• 📸 Open the Gallery app and select the tab "Photos" or "Albums".
• ✋ Press and hold your finger on the first image to activate the highlight mode.
• 👆 Swipe your finger across the screen or point to select all unnecessary files.
• 🗑️ Click the "Delete" button (basket icon) in the lower menu.

It's worth noting that the files that are deleted in this way don't disappear permanently, they go to the "Recently Deleted" folder, where they are stored for 30 days, and it's a MIUI shell security mechanism that allows you to recover accidentally erased images, and if you want to vacate space immediately, you'll have to clean this folder separately.

⚠️ Before mass cleaning, make sure important photos are not synced to that device alone unless you have backed up.

Working with the Explorer and system folders

To clean up files that are not displayed in the Gallery in depth, you need to use the Explorer app. In Xiaomi smartphones, it is often called Files or Explorer. This tool gives you access to the Android file system, allowing you to find hidden folders, downloads from messengers and app cache. This is especially useful when memory is occupied by obscure files.

Navigation in Explorer is done by folder. Main media files are usually stored in DCIM, Pictures or Download directories. Inside the DCIM folder is the Camera subfolder, which stores images from the main camera by default. By deleting files from here, you act directly, bypassing the Gallery clipboard, which is sometimes necessary for indexing errors.

Often users forget about messenger folders. Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber store all the images and videos received in separate directories. To find them, you need to go to internal memory and find a folder with the name of the corresponding application. For example, the path to WhatsApp media often looks like Android/media/com.whatsapp.

• 📂 Run the Files or Explorer app on your desktop.
• 📁 Go to the "Internal Drive" or "Device Memory" section".
• 🔍 Find the file. DCIM for camera photo or MIUI screenshot.
• ❌ Select files with a long press and select "Delete" in the menu.

Using Explorer, you can sort files by size, you can sort the contents of the folder by size, so you can quickly find and delete the heavy videos that take up the most space, and this is the most effective strategy for quickly unloading the system.

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Use the Size Sort feature in Explorer to instantly find the heaviest video files that take up gigabytes of memory.

Cleaning the basket and irrevocable removal

As mentioned earlier, Xiaomi's default system saves deleted files for a month, called "Recently Deleted." While files are there, they continue to take up space on your device. To fully clean the memory, you need to perform the second step of deleting the recycle bin itself.

To get to this section, open the Gallery app and go to the Albums tab. Scroll down to the end where the Other Albums category is located. There you'll see the "Recently Deleted" folder. Inside you'll find everything that's been erased in the last 30 days. You can selectively delete or clean it all up at once.

Once the recycle bin is cleaned, files are marked as free space by the system, but the physical data can remain on the disk until it is overwritten with new data. However, for the operating system, this volume is already considered available for writing new applications or photos. Regularly checking this folder is a good habit for maintaining order.

⚠️ After cleaning the folder "Recently deleted" file recovery standard means of the smartphone becomes impossible.

Use of cloud services and synchronization

Xiaomi device owners often use Xiaomi Cloud or Google Photos, which free up space on the device by storing originals online. Google Photos’ “Free up” feature automatically removes images that are already securely uploaded to the cloud.

To activate sync, you need to go to the settings of your Google account or Mi Account. In the "Sync" section, you should activate the "Photos and videos" item. Once you have finished downloading, you can safely delete local copies. The system will prompt you to delete files that are already in the cloud if you use the appropriate storage optimization settings.

It is important to distinguish between synchronization and simple backup. When synchronized, deleting a file on a phone can lead to its deletion in the cloud if the correct behavior is not configured, so before a mass cleaning, it is better to check the sync settings of a particular application so that you do not lose the archive.

• ☁️ Open the Google Photos app or Xiaomi Gallery.
• ⚙️ Go to the settings and find the item "Synchronization" or "Suppression".
• ✅ Make sure the status of "All photos uploaded".
• 🧹 Use the "Free Space" function to delete local copies.

Cloud use is especially important for models with a small amount of internal memory, such as 64 GB or 128 GB, which allows you to store thousands of photos without worrying about space shortages, but to access them will require an Internet connection.

Search and remove duplicates and similar photos

With the release of new versions of MIUI and HyperOS, standard tools have features for finding duplicates. A camera in Serial Shooting or Live Photo mode can create many copies of a single frame. Duplicates often occur when you reboot from messengers or synchronize failures, and removing them is the safest way to free up space.

The Security app or the Gallery itself (depending on the firmware version) has a Tools or Recommendations section where the system automatically analyzes the library and suggests that similar images be removed. The algorithm compares the checksums of the files and the visual content, leaving you the right to choose the best frame from the series.

Manually checking Screenshots and Favorites also often reveals unnecessary copies. Users often take multiple screenshots in a row or save the same image from different sources, removing such replays can return from several hundred megabytes to a gigabyte of free space.

And remember, video, the duplicates of videos are huge, and if you're a video blogger or you're a frequent filmer, check the draft folders, and they often have the same file with the same name. VID_2023... and VID_2023... (1).

Third-party applications for memory analysis

If built-in tools are not enough, specialized applications from Google Play come to the rescue. Programs like Files by Google, Clean Master or SD Maid can analyze the file system deeper, they find residual files, cache of remote applications and forgotten downloads that the standard Xiaomi analyzer does not see.

Analyzer apps build a visual memory card, showing which types of files take up the most space, which helps to understand what exactly eats gigabytes: maybe it's not a photo, but a Telegram cache or offline navigator cards, and using them correctly allows for a comprehensive cleaning.

However, be careful with so-called "accelerators": some of them can aggressively clean the cache of system applications, which will lead to their longer loading next time.

⚠️ Warning: Avoid apps that require root rights to simply delete photos. Standard user rights are sufficient to securely work with media files.

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Integrated approach: the combination of manual cleaning, cloud use and duplicate analysis gives the maximum result for freeing up memory.