Xiaomi and Redmi are both famous for their functionality, but over time, accumulated content can significantly slow down the system. One source of digital junk is often a crowded inbox of incoming messages. Smartphone owners often wonder how to effectively free up space without losing important confirmation codes or correspondence with loved ones.
Modern MIUI shells and the new HyperOS offer advanced tools for managing media and text. However, standard deletion methods may not be obvious to beginners, especially given the presence of hidden folders and baskets. Understanding the storage structure will allow you to competently manage the memory of the device.
In this article, we will take a look at all the cleaning options available, from manually removing single dialogs to using system filters to working with archives, and learn not only to erase unnecessary information, but also to correctly recover accidentally deleted information if necessary.
Basic methods of manual deletion of correspondence
The easiest way to clean up messages is to manually remove unnecessary dialogs. In Google's standard Messages app or MIUI system app, the algorithm is almost identical, so you have to open the app and find a list of all your chats.
To delete a single conversation, you just need to tap a specific contact or phone number for a long time, and then the dialog will stand out, and at the top of the screen, you can select multiple senders, ticking their names, which greatly speeds up the cleaning process.
After selecting the desired dialogs, click on the basket icon, which is usually located in the upper right corner or at the bottom of the screen. The system will ask you to confirm the action, since deleting messages is an irreversible procedure without using backups. Be careful when choosing contacts for cleaning.
⚠️ Note: Messages deleted through the standard shopping cart may not be available for recovery for 30 days, after which they are permanently erased.
There's also an alternative method of quickly removing it from the list, swiping it from left to right or right to left, depending on the settings of your version of the shell, and you'll see a context menu where you can select "Delete" action, which is convenient for quickly cleaning one or two dialogs.
- 📱 Long press allows you to allocate a group of contacts for batch removal.
- 🗑️ The icon of the cart in the confirmation menu ensures that you do not delete the excess by mistake.
- ↩️ Swipe on dialogue is the fastest way to remove one conversation without logging into the allocation menu.
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Use the “Secret All” function in the control menu (three dots in the corner) if you want to clear the entire message box at once, but remember the importance of saved codes.
Cleaning through the “Basket” menu and data recovery
An important feature of modern Xiaomi smartphones is the presence of a clipboard for remote messages, which is often called the "Basket", a security mechanism that allows you to recover data in the event of a user error, you can find this section inside the message application itself.
To get into the remote storage settings, open the Messages app and click on the three dots or profile icon in the corner of the screen. In the drop-down menu, select Trash bin. This stores all the deleted dialogs that have not been erased.
You can see the date of deletion of each message from the cart, and the system automatically clears that partition after 30 days, freeing up space on the drive, but you can do this by force by selecting the "Clean the Recycle Bin" option, which will permanently delete all the data contained therein.
☑️ Check before cleaning the basket
If you need to return a randomly deleted correspondence, just select the desired dialog in the shopping cart and click the Restore button. The message will return to the main inbox as it was deleted. This only works within a 30-day retention period.
| Action. | Where to find out. | Storage period | Possible recovery |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deletion of dialogue | List of communications | 30 days | Yes. |
| Cleaning the basket | Menu → Basket | Forever. | No. |
| Auto-removal | Systemic process | 30 days | No (after expiration) |
Using filters and sorting for quick cleaning
When thousands of messages accumulate in the inbox, manual brute force becomes inefficient. Xiaomi’s MIUI and HyperOS smartphones have powerful filters that allow you to sort content by sender type, which is especially useful for fighting spam and advertising mailings.
Open the messaging app and find the Filters tab or button, where the system automatically categorizes incoming messages: private messages, service notifications, advertising and spam. By going to the Ads or Unknowns category, you can massively select and delete hundreds of messages at a time.
Also worth paying attention to is the lock settings. The filter menu often has a "Blocked" section where messages from blacklisted numbers get to, and cleaning up that section helps not only free up space, but also remove annoying notifications from intrusive services.
To fine-tune it, you can use keyword search, click on the magnifying glass in the app and type in the word "code" or the name of the bank, for example, to quickly find and remove old confirmations that have already lost their relevance, but are taking up place in the database.
Automatic cleaning through the “Safety” application
In the Xiaomi ecosystem, the system app Security plays a key role, not only protecting against viruses, but also adept at analyzing memory, including app cache and junk files. While direct deletion of SMS from here is limited, the tool is useful for overall optimization.
Launch the Security app and select Clean up. The system will scan the device and prompt you to delete temporary files. Note that a standard scanner may not touch the SMS database directly for privacy reasons, but it will clear the messaging app cache if it is bloated.
To work more deeply with data, you can use the "Accelerate" function inside the same application, which closes the background processes and frees up RAM, which can help if the message application is slow due to database overflow.
⚠️ Warning: Third-party cleaning apps (Clean Master and analogues) often require redundant permissions and can delete the desired data, so only use the built-in Xiaomi tools.
If you want to make space with text messages, you can use the built-in memory analyzer. Go to Settings → About Phone → Memory (or through the Security → Memory app) and see how much space Messages take up and manage them.
Removal of Multimedia Investments (MMS)
Text SMS takes up negligible space, but the situation changes dramatically when it comes to the question of text. MMS-Photos, videos and audio recordings that come through a standard messaging application can take up gigabytes of memory, filling the drive discreetly.
To find and remove heavy attachments, you can use a file manager or gallery. In the Messages app, such files are usually saved to the MIUI/gallery/cloud/cache or similar folder, depending on the version of the software. Direct deletion of files from the folder may not remove them from correspondence visually.
The best way to delete media is through the context menu of the dialogue itself. Open the chat, click on the information icon (often the letter "i" in a circle or three dots). Select Media Files or Attachments. Here you will see all the pictures and videos sent in that conversation.
Select the files you don't need and click delete. This action will free up space on the physical drive. Remember, removing the attachment from the dialogue doesn't remove it from the shared gallery if it was saved there automatically, so check out Messages in the gallery.
- 🖼️ MMS-Photos of the message may weigh up to 5-10 MB each that is significantly larger than text.
- 📂 Remove attachments through the dialog menu so that the link between the file and the message is broken correctly.
- 🗑️ Don’t forget to check out the general gallery, as SMS media is often duplicated there.
Why did the SMS not leave the room?
Storage settings and automatic removal of old SMS
To avoid overflow problems in the future, it makes sense to set up an automatic limit on the number of messages saved. In the standard Google Messages app, which is often installed on global versions of Xiaomi, this feature is built-in.
Go to the app settings (three dots → Settings) and find the Messages or Additionals section, which may have the option to delete old messages, and activate it, you can set a limit: for example, store no more than 1,000 messages in a single dialog or delete messages older than 1 year.
In the MIUI stock app, such settings may be hidden or not explicitly, depending on the Android version, in which case it is recommended to periodically conduct manual revisions or use third-party but proven SMS management applications that have a more flexible task scheduler.
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Automatically limiting the number of messages in a conversation is the best way to prevent memory overflows in the future without your involvement.
It’s also worth checking your sync settings with Google One or Xiaomi’s cloud. If you have a message backup enabled, make sure it doesn’t copy already deleted junk.Tune backup so it only covers important data, ignoring spammy categories.