The situation when Xiaomi smartphone suddenly reports an overflow of internal storage is familiar to many users: the screen flashes a warning, applications start to work slowly or even fly out, and the system refuses to take new pictures. The most frustrating thing is that when you try to understand the cause through a standard conductor, you find out: photo and video folders are empty, and the amount of installed programs is minimal.
Owners of Redmi and POCO devices often find that a significant part of the space is occupied by the “Other” partition or system cache, which is invisible to the average user. This is not a meter error, but a feature of the Android operating system and the MIUI or HyperOS shell. The system aggressively saves temporary files to speed up work, but forgets to delete them, creating “digital garbage”.
In this article, we will take a closer look at the mechanisms that hide the real amount of data, and suggest specific steps to free gigabytes. You will learn how to safely delete hidden files, clean the cache of specific applications, and why standard cleaning is often useless. Understanding the structure of the file system will help you avoid losing important data.
Hidden backups and junk files in the Gallery
The first place to look when looking for a missing location is in multimedia folders. The Gallery app on Xiaomi smartphones has a cloud sync feature that can by default store local copies of all your photos and videos in high resolution. Even if you deleted a picture from the main tape, its reduced copy or reserve can remain in hidden directories.
Especially a lot of space is occupied by videos shot in 4K or high frame rate. The system can create multiple versions of a single file for quick scrolling and editing. It is also worth checking the DCIM →.thumbnails folder. This is a hidden directory where thumbnails of all images are stored. Over time, this file can grow to several gigabytes, although visually you do not see new photos.
To clean up that data, you don't have to delete the photos themselves, but you just have to use the built-in cleaning tool or manually delete the contents of the thumbnail folder that the system will recreate the next time you run the gallery, a safe operation that often frees up 1 to 5 GB of space instantly.
⚠️ Before deleting the.thumbnails folder, make sure your important photos are saved in the cloud or on your computer, as if the system crashes, re-generation of thumbnails can take time and battery power.
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Use the Invisible Files mode in standard Explorer to see hidden folders that start with a dot. Be careful to delete only those that you understand, such as messenger cache.
The “Other” folder phenomenon and system cache
The most mysterious category in Android storage is the Other section, where the system dumps everything that can not uniquely be classified as apps, images or audio files, and this basket includes messenger databases, temporary update files, remnants of remote programs and logs of the system.
Often, this partition is 10-15 GB. The main culprits are Telegram, WhatsApp and Viber. These apps store every file, sticker pack and voice message you view into local memory, even if you have already deleted correspondence in the chat itself.
Cleaning the Other folder requires manual intervention through the file manager, you have to go the Android → data path and find the folders of the corresponding messengers, inside them the desired volume usually hides in the cache or media subfolders, removing the contents of these folders will not affect your text messages, but will free up space from accumulated media debris.
Why doesn’t the “Other” folder shrink immediately?
Analysis of space by third-party utilities
Standard MIUI tools don't always show a detailed disk map. For deep analysis, we recommend using specialized applications like DiskUsage or Files by Google. They build a visual storage map where the size of the rectangles corresponds to the size of the files, which allows you to instantly find memory eaters.
Using these snails, you can find forgotten navigation files, offline maps, or cache from streaming services like Spotify and Netflix, and these apps download content to listen to without the Internet, and that content takes up space until you manually unload or uninstall the app.
It is important to distinguish between system files and user content when working with such analyzers. Deleting files from the folders of the system or vendor can lead to unstable operation of the smartphone.
App cache and social media data
Social networks (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook) are the leaders in memory consumption, the mechanism of their work involves saving every video and image viewed to cache, so that when you reopen the tape, content is loaded instantly.
You can clear this volume through the settings of the application itself. Go to Settings → Apps → All applications, find the desired social network and select Clear Cache. Don’t confuse it with the “Clean All” or “Erase Data” button – the last action will completely delete your account from your phone, including logins and passwords, requiring re-authorization.
For some applications, such as Telegram, the built-in cleaning works more efficiently than the system. In the settings of the messenger itself, there is a section “Data and memory”, where you can set up automatic deletion of the cache if it occupies more than a certain volume, or manually clean it with a single button.
| Type of data | Where it's stored | Is it safe to remove | Impact on work |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cash app. | /data/data/... | Yeah, totally. | Applications can be loaded a little longer on the first run |
| Miniatures (Thumbnails) | /DCIM/.thumbnails | Yes. | Gallery will re-create preview photos |
| Logs of the system | /data/log | Yes. | Does not affect the work, is removed after restarting |
| Application data | /data/data/... | No (no backup) | Loss of progress in games, settings and accounts |
Residual files after deleting programs
When you delete an Android app, the operating system often leaves tails behind it, which can be downloaded updates or temporary databases. On Xiaomi smartphones, these files remain in the Android/obb and Android/data folder with the names of the deleted packages.
For example, if you played a heavy game and deleted it, a folder with additional game resources (textures, music) can weigh 2-3 GB and continue to take up space, the system considers these files as user data and does not automatically delete them when uninstalled.
Regularly reviewing the Android/obb folder helps you find those forgotten files, if the folder name matches the name of a long-deleted game or program, you can delete it, and for confidence, you can check the list of installed applications in the settings.
☑️ Weekly Memory Prevention
System updates and temporary files
Updates to MIUI or HyperOS firmware are often downloaded in the background. If the upgrade is successful or stuck, the installation package can remain in memory. Updates weigh between 2 and 4 GB and become useless ballast once installed.
It's also worth checking the folder. Downloaded_rom It's often the root of the internal storage, and it's the old version of the firmware, and if your phone is stable and you don't plan on flashing it anytime soon, you can delete the contents of that folder.
Another source of debris is temporary installation files (.apk), which remain after updating applications through a browser or third-party stores. Xiaomi’s standard cleaner is able to find such files, but sometimes skips them if they have a non-standard name.
⚠️ Note: Do not delete files with the.dex extension or folders with system process names (such as com.android.systemui) manually through Explorer.
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The most effective way to free up space is a comprehensive approach: cleaning the messenger cache, deleting the folder.thumbnails and revision of the folder. Android/data.
Radical measures: resetting and formatting
If none of the methods worked and the memory is still filled with air, it's possible that the file system has accumulated indexing errors, in which case Factory Reset helps, which completely cleans the phone, returning it to the "out of the box" state.
Before this procedure, it is critical to make a full backup of all data, use the Mi Cloud, Google Photos or transfer files to your computer, and once reset, the phone will work faster and the memory will be distributed correctly.
An alternative to a full reset might be to format internal storage as an external drive (if available on your Android version), but this is rare. Most often, just complete a full backup, reset and not restore applications “wholesale”, but re-load the necessary ones.