How to Clean Xiaomi Cloud Storage and Free Up Space

Owners of Redmi and Xiaomi smartphones often face the unpleasant situation when cloud storage is overflowing, which leads to a stop synchronizing photos, contacts and other important data, the system begins to demand freeing up space, blocking the creation of new backups.

Free space in the cloud is critical to the safety of your information. If the limit is exhausted, new images will not be uploaded to the server, which poses a risk of losing them when your device breaks. In this article, we will discuss effective methods of cleaning and managing files.

The process of freeing up space requires careful attention to avoid accidentally removing the data you need, and we will look at both the standard Mi Cloud tools and additional ways to optimize memory usage.

Analysis of cloud storage occupancy

Before you start deleting, you need to understand what takes up precious megabytes, most often the majority of the consumption of photos and videos, which are automatically copied to the cloud, but do not forget about backups of system settings.

For a detailed analysis, go to Settings → Mi Account → Xiaomi Cloud. This displays a visual occupancy scale and categorization. System analytics will show the exact weight of each data type.

Note the Device Backups section. If you've previously used another Xiaomi phone, it can take up a significant amount of copy. Older backups often contain duplicate contacts and SMS that are no longer relevant.

• 📸 Photos and videos usually occupy up to 80% of the space.
• 📱 System backups – copies of settings, call lists and messages.
• 📝 Notes and Recorder – audio files and text documents can weigh a lot.
• 📂 Mi Drop files – temporary files transferred through the built-in exchanger.

Gallery cleaning and synchronization management

The fastest way to free up space is to use the library. In the Gallery app, go to the Cloud tab, which shows all the images uploaded to the Xiaomi Cloud server.

You can delete files selectively or as albums, and when you remove them from the cloud, they will disappear on connected devices if you sync them, so pre-copy important originals to your computer or external drive.

Pay special attention to the section “Recently deleted”: files sent to the Recycle Bin continue to occupy space in the cloud for 30 days.

Use file size sorting. Often, 4K video takes up gigabytes of space, while regular images only take up a few megabytes. Removing a few heavy videos can solve space shortage more effectively than cleaning thousands of small pictures.

Removing old backups of devices

Many users forget that Xiaomi Cloud stores full copies of the settings of old smartphones. If you change your phone, a copy of the previous device becomes useless cargo.

To manage backups, go to Settings → Mi Account → Xiaomi Cloud → Backups. This shows a list of all the devices that have copies made for you. Select the model of the phone you no longer use.

⚠️ Warning: Deleting the device's backup permanently erases saved settings, Wi-Fi passwords and server call history. Make sure you don't need any more data from that phone.

After selecting the device, click the "Remove backup" button. The process may take some time depending on the amount of data, and the release of space will occur immediately after the operation is completed.

Clearing notes, dictaphone and contacts

Text notes and voice recordings are often underrated, but they can take up substantial volume. Long lectures, interviews, or simply voice reminders stored in a recorder sync and consume space.

Check the Notes app. Embedded images, screenshots and large text files in sync folders are subject to revision. Deleting unnecessary shopping lists or old ideas will help free up space.

The contact section is different. Text data is extremely low, so cleaning contacts to free up space in the cloud makes no sense. Focus on multimedia content.

• 🎙️ Voice recordings – delete long files that have no value.
• 📝 Note attachments – check saved pictures and files.
• 📅 Calendar – Old events can be archived locally.

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Use the Mi Cloud app on your PC (i.mi.com) to sort files massively, and it’s easier to isolate large groups of files from your computer and delete them than it is from a small smartphone screen.

Automatic synchronization setting

To prevent overflow from occurring again, you need to configure sync settings correctly. By default, the phone can try to upload everything that enters the camera to the cloud, including serial shooting and screenshots.

Go to the gallery sync settings, you can turn off video downloads over the mobile network, or completely disable syncing of certain albums, such as Screenshots or WhatsApp Images.

Storage optimization is another useful feature, which allows you to store your original photos in the cloud and leave compressed copies on your device, but with a full cloud, this feature won't work until you clear space.

⚠️ Warning: Disabling sync for certain folders means that new files from them will not get to the cloud.

It is recommended that you set up sync only for the most important albums, such as Camera and Portraits, and that you store your junk folders and screenshots locally or in other services.

Alternative methods of data storage

If the free limit of 5GB is consistently short, it makes sense to consider alternatives: Xiaomi Cloud's tariff expansion costs money, but there are free storage methods available as well.

Use Google Photos in space-saving mode (high quality) and provides unlimited storage (with some compression restrictions) and integrates perfectly with Android.

Regularly migrating your archive to your computer or external hard drive is the most reliable way to do this: Create monthly folders and upload photos to them, and then delete them from the cloud, and this forms a habit of digital minimalism.

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Regular manual cloud cleaning once a month is more effective than emergency file deletion when sync locks.