Modern Xiaomi and Redmi smartphones have powerful hardware, but the MIUI shell or the new HyperOS eventually become overgrown with digital garbage. Users often face a situation where free space on the drive ends and the system begins to work slower, due to the accumulation of temporary files, remnants of remote programs and bloated cache of messengers.
Cleaning the device requires a systematic approach, since standard tools do not always find all hidden folders. In this article, we will discuss effective methods of freeing up memory that will help restore the gadget to its former speed.
Regularly reviewing content should not be ignored, as a crowded /data partition can cause operating system failures. The proper hygiene of digital space prolongs the life of the battery and the processor, reducing the load on them. Let's start a detailed analysis of what exactly takes up space.
Analysis of the occupied space by built-in means
The first step is always diagnostics, and the MIUI shell has a powerful tool called Cleanup, which is often underrated, and it can find large files, duplicate photos, and uninstall packet remnants, but its automatic mode is sometimes too careful.
For deep analysis, you need to go to the storage settings, where the system visualizes the distribution of data into categories, which allows you to quickly identify the "eaters" of the place, which are often video editors or offline map navigation.
Notice the "Other" section, which often hides app data that is not automatically classified by the system, such as streaming cache or downloaded episodes of TV shows.
⚠️ Warning: When cleaning through the standard Security app, read carefully what is being removed. Sometimes, important documents from the Downloads folder that you forgot to save to the cloud are found there.
Use file size sorting. This is the fastest way to find forgotten 4K videos or archives that have been dead for years, and deleting even one of these files can free up gigabytes.
Deep cleaning of WhatsApp and Telegram messengers
The most voracious apps on any Android smartphone are messengers. WhatsApp and Telegram store every image and video received in the device’s memory by default. Over time, the Media folder can grow to tens of gigabytes.
Inside Telegram, cleaning is done most efficiently through the settings of the app itself. Go to Settings → Data and memory → Memory Use. Here you can set an automatic life timer for the cache, for example, 3 days or 1 week.
WhatsApp is more complicated because it stores files in a shared file system, and you have to go the Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Media route, and that's where the WhatsApp Images and WhatsApp Video folders are, which are often crowded.
- 🗑️ Delete the Private folder inside the WhatsApp media directory if you don’t use hidden chats.
- 📹 Check the Statuses folder where all viewed contact statuses are saved.
- 📎 In Telegram, use the function “Clear cache”, it does not delete correspondence, but only frees up space.
It’s important to understand that manually deleting files through a file manager is safer for your correspondence history than completely clearing the app’s data in your Android settings. You can selectively delete heavy videos while saving your text history.
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In Telegram, you can set up automatic cache cleaning when you reach a certain limit, for example, 500 MB. This will prevent the proliferation of garbage in the future.
Removal of system debris and residual files
When you delete Android apps, they often leave their configuration files and empty folders, and on Xiaomi smartphones, this is especially noticeable after frequent software experiments. Residual code can take up a little space, but in total creates fragmentation of the file system.
To find such files, it is recommended to use advanced file managers, such as Total Commander or FX File Explorer, which allow you to see hidden directories that begin from the point where logs and temporary data are often hidden.
Pay special attention to the Android/data folder, which stores game and heavy-duty apps data, and if you delete a game but the folder with its name (e.g. com.gameloft.android) is still there, you can erase it.
| Type of data | Location. | Can I remove it? |
|---|---|---|
| Cash app. | Settings → Applications | Yeah (safe) |
| Folder.thumbnails | DCIM/.thumbnails | Yes (recreated) |
| Logcat files | Different system folders | Yes (that's error logs) |
| MIUI folder | The root of inner memory | No (systemic) |
Don’t try to delete files that you don’t know what they are, especially if they are in the root directories, which can cause MIUI to work incorrectly. It’s better to leave 100MB of garbage than to break the system process.
☑️ Check before deleting system files
Cleaning up the download and duplicate folder
Download folder is a black hole where everything flows: installers APK, PDF-documents, images from the browser. Browsers like Chrome or UC Browser often download files in the background without the user’s knowledge.
Check the contents of this directory regularly. Delete the application installation files (.apk) as they are no longer needed after installation. Store them on your phone makes no sense, the new version can always be downloaded from Google Play.
A separate problem is duplicate photos. When synchronized with different clouds or unsuccessfully imported from a PC, you can create copies of files with a name (1) or copy in the title. Manually search for them for a long time, you better use specialized utilities.
There are lightweight duplicate applications that scan hash sums of files, and they find exactly the same images, even if they're called differently, so that you can safely free up space without deleting unique images.
⚠️ Attention: Before mass cleaning the Downloads folder, sort the files by type. Accidentally delete an important contract in a format PDF Or a saved plane ticket is very easy if you act at random.
Use the Recycle Bin function in the gallery and file manager. Once cleaned, look in there and make room for it. The files in the Recycle Bin still take up disk space, they're just hidden from view.
Removal of pre-installed software (Bloatware)
Redmi and Xiaomi smartphones often come with a lot of pre-installed apps, some of them are Google services, some are products of the MIUI ecosystem, and some are advertising software from partners. Not everything can be removed in the standard way.
Removing system debris that doesn't give you a Delete button requires a computer and an ADB (Android Debug Bridge) utility, a powerful tool that allows you to control your smartphone from a PC, and requires you to include USB debugging in the developer menu.
The process is this: you plug in the phone, you run the console on your computer, and you type a command to delete the packet, for example, to remove a standard browser, you use a command:
adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.android.browserIt's important to know the exact name of the package you want to delete. A single letter error can cause the system component to be removed, causing a cyclical bootloop.
- 📦 You can delete: com.miui.videoplayer (if you don't watch the video), com.facebook.katana (Facebook).
- 📦 You can delete: com.google.android.apps.docs (Google Docs) if you are not using it.
- 🚫 You can not delete: com.android.packageinstaller (package installer).
- 🚫 You can not delete: com.miui.securitycenter (security center).
List of safe to remove MIUI packets
Resetting to factory settings as a radical method
If manual cleaning doesn’t work and the phone continues to slow down, the nuclear option is a complete reset, which will bring the device back out of the box by removing all user data, settings and applications.
Before starting the procedure, make sure to create a full backup. Use the built-in MIUI backup tool on your PC or external drive, and make sure contacts and photos are synced with your Google Account.
You can reset via the settings menu: Settings → About Phone → Settings Reset → Erase all data. The phone will reboot and the formatting process will begin, which can take from 5 to 15 minutes.
After a reset, take your time to restore all applications from the backup at once. Install only the necessary and observe the system. Often, it is one “curve” application recovered from the backup that causes problems.
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Full reset is the only way to guarantee that you will remove all traces of viruses and deep system errors accumulated over the years.
⚠️ Note: After resetting, Google's protection system FRP (Factory Reset Protection will require you to enter a password from the Google account that was the primary one on that device».
Prevention and Digital Hygiene Regulations
To avoid going back to cleaning every two weeks, implement simple smartphone rules. Regularity is the key to order. Allocate 10 minutes a week to check the Downloads folder and gallery.
Set up an automatic upload to the cloud with the “Free Space” function, services like Google Photos or Yandex.Disk can remove photos from the device that are already stored in the cloud, which saves gigabytes.
Avoid installing accelerators and antiviruses of dubious origin. On Android, they often work like viruses, showing ads and collecting data. The built-in MIUI protection and common sense is enough.
Keep an eye out for system updates. With new versions of MIUI and HyperOS, Xiaomi engineers are constantly optimizing memory and fixing resource leaks. Up-to-date firmware is more stable.