Owners of Xiaomi, Redmi and Poco smartphones often face the mysterious situation of system storage being overcrowded, even though there is no apparent gigabyte "eater" in the gallery and application list.This is a common problem of the MIUI shell and the new HyperOS that can seriously slow down the device.The system starts to work slower, photos stop saving, and notifications from messengers can come with a delay.
Understanding how Android distributes data on disk is key to solving the problem. Often users see the frightening words “Other” or “System Files” that take up tens of gigabytes. This is not a counting error, but a specific mechanism of the file system that requires a competent approach to cleaning.
There are several main reasons why free space disappears into nowhere, such as bloated app cache, remnants of deleted programs, system error logs, or even hidden folders from messengers, and invisible garbage files from WeChat, Telegram, and TikTok that are not deleted by standard cleaning, and we will take each file type separately.
Storage Anatomy: What Android Memory Divides
Your smartphone’s physical memory is divided into several logical partitions, each with its own purpose: User data, system files, and temporary caches are stored in different areas, but in the settings interface they are often summed up or masked. The standard division includes a partition for the operating system, a partition for user applications and their data, and media files.
When you see that memory is busy, it's important to understand what kind of data a resource is consuming. The system partition is usually a fixed amount and can't be reduced without flashing it. However, the user data partition is dynamically growing. Applications create temporary files to load content quickly, and over time, these files can take up more space than the application itself.
The MIUI shell has its built-in memory analyzer that tries to group files into categories: images, videos, documents, applications and "other," and it is the "other" category that most often raises questions, since all files that the system has not been able to uniquely classify fall into it, which can be databases, archives, update files and backups.
⚠️ Note: Do not attempt to manually delete files from system folders through root-righted file managers without understanding their purpose.This can lead to a cyclical smartphone restart (bootloop) and loss of warranty.
You can use embedded tools or third-party tools to analyze the structure of memory in detail, but a standard file manager often hides the real volume of folders by showing only approximate values.
The phenomenon of the category “Other”: what is hiding there
Category “Other” in the settings of Xiaomi storage
YouTube
Netflix
The second major source of filling in the other is the remnants of the remote applications. When you uninstall the program through the standard interface, some temporary files and configuration records may remain on the disk. Over time, these tails accumulate a lot, especially if you often experiment with new programs.
Also in this category often fall system update files that were not deleted after successful installation. OTA-Updates can take up 2 to 5 GB of space, and debugging logs and error reports are recorded here if the corresponding feature is included in the developer menu.
How to find hidden large files?
Telegram and WhatsApp store the media they receive in their own databases, which the system often classifies as “other” rather than images or videos, creating the illusion that there are few media files, although in fact they are simply hidden in the bowels of the application’s system folders.
Hidden eaters: messengers and streaming services
Messengers are the main culprits behind the memory shortage on modern smartphones, which means storing your correspondence history and all received files locally on the device for quick access. Telegram, for example, caches all viewed photos and videos by default, turning the application folder into a storage capacity of tens of gigabytes.
Streaming platforms like Spotify, Yandex Music or Netflix also use local storage. Even if you didn't download music for offline listening, the app could save buffer data. Clearing the cache of these apps through Android settings often returns free space, but requires re-uploading data the next time you run.
To effectively combat this phenomenon, you need to set up automatic cache cleaning within the applications themselves. Telegram does this through the Settings menu → Data and memory → Memory Use. There you can set a limit on the storage time of the cache, for example, 3 days or 1 week.
- 📱 Telegram: Set autodelete cache for 3 days to free up gigabytes of space automatically.
- 💬 WhatsApp: In chat settings, turn off auto-save to the gallery so that duplicate photos do not take up space.
- 🎵 Spotify/Yandex: Check the flow quality settings and cache size, limiting its maximum volume.
- 📺 YouTube: Regularly clear your browsing history and app cache through Android system settings.
It is important to understand that clearing the messenger cache does not delete your correspondence if it is stored on the server (as in Telegram).However, on WhatsApp, when you delete an application without a backup, you can lose your message history, so be careful.
⚠️ Before clearing your messenger data, make sure you have an up-to-date backup of important communications in the cloud (Google Drive or iCloud), otherwise recovery will be impossible.
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Enable the Auto-Delete feature for all chats in the Privacy section on Telegram, which will not only free up space, but also increase the security of your correspondence.
Instructions for deep cleaning of Xiaomi storage
To free up space on Xiaomi and Redmi smartphones, there are several levels of cleaning, starting with standard tools that are safe for the system, then moving on to more advanced methods that require care. Below is a step-by-step guide to maximize the freedom of space.
The first step is to use the built-in Security app, and it has a Cleanup module that finds obvious debris, but for deep cleaning, you have to go to the storage settings. Go to Settings → About Phone → Storage, and here the system will show you the details by category.
If standard methods don't work, you can use USB debugging mode and a computer to manually delete files from system folders, but this requires caution. A safer method is to use the Advanced Cleanup function in the Security app, where you can find large files and duplicates.
☑️ Checklist for full cleaning
Pay special attention to the Download folder. Browsers and instant messengers often save APK installation files, documents and pictures that the user forgets about, and deleting the contents of this folder is safe if you are sure that you no longer need the files.
| Cleaning method | Security | Efficiency | Risk of data loss |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard cleaning (Safety) | Tall. | Low. | No. |
| Cleaning up the app cache | Tall. | Medium | Minimum |
| Delete Thumbnails folder | Medium | Tall. | No (recreated) |
| Reset to factory settings | Tall. | Maximum | Total loss (without backup) |
The Secret of Thumbnails Folder and How to Stop It Spreading
One of the most famous holes in Android memory is the.thumbnails folder, which is located in the hidden section of the gallery (DCIM/.thumbnails) and contains thumbnails of all the photos and videos you've ever viewed. The system creates them for quick scroll through the gallery, but never deletes them automatically.
The size of this folder can reach 10-20 GB or more if you're actively taking pictures and making videos, and the files in it are.thumb and they don't weigh much, but they're in the thousands, and it's safe to delete this folder, because the system will just recreate it, but it's empty, and it will make room instantly.
To delete it, you'll need a file manager with access to hidden files. In Xiaomi's standard Explorer, you'll need to enable the display of hidden files in the settings. Then go to internal memory, open the DCIM folder and find.thumbnails. Highlight all the contents and delete.
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The folder.thumbnails is not a virus, but a system cache of thumbnails, and cleaning it regularly (once a month) is the best way to keep the gallery fast and the memory free.
There is a life hack to prevent this folder from growing back. Once cleaned, create a regular file (not a folder) in the DCIM folder called.thumbnails. Since there can be no two objects with the same name in the same directory, the system will not be able to create a new folder for the cache, and the space will no longer fill.
But there's a side effect to this method: scrolling through the gallery can become less smooth, because the system will have to generate thumbnails on the fly each time it opens, a trade-off between the speed of the gallery and the free space on the disk.
Radical measures: resetting and formatting
If neither cache cleanup nor file deletion helped, and the System Files or Other category continues to take up the lion’s share of memory, it may be that the file system has been corrupted or has accumulated too many errors, in which case the only effective solution is a complete factory reset.
Before doing this, it is critical to make a complete backup of your data, use Google's cloud services or the built-in Mi Cloud, and copy all important files to your computer or external drive through your computer or external drive. USB-cable.
To perform the reset, go to Settings → About Phone → Reset. Select “Erase All Data.” The phone will reboot and start the cleanup process, which can take 10-15 minutes. After that, the device will be as new, without unnecessary debris and file system errors.
⚠️ Warning: After resetting, be sure to update your system to the latest version, which will fix known memory management bugs that may have been present in the firmware.
An alternative to a full reset might be to format an internal drive as an external drive (if that option is available in your Android version), but on modern versions of HyperOS and MIUI, this feature is often hidden or unavailable without root rights.