Develop Bugs

Low on space - Phone Storage space is getting low

Somehow my space on my phone is very low. I started getting the messages this morning. I wouldn't say that I have a load of applications. No more than I had on my HTC Magic...Is this too much for it to handle?
Here goes;
2010 World Cup
Air Control
AppAware
Astro
Barcode Scanner
BBC News
BeebPlayer
DishPointer Pro
Droidbox Free
Earth
Engadget
F1Android 2010
Facebook
Foursquare
Fring
Gesture Search
Google Sky Map
Hoccer
iGo
KeePassDroid
Listen
Lookout
MapDroyd
Maps
Nimbuzz
Pkt Auctions eBay
Qik
Shareprice
Shazaam
Sky News
Soccer Livescores
Torrent-fu
Twitroid
UK TV Guide
Wave Secure
Zedge
What are my options?

1. Clear cache;
2. Remove some apps;
3. Wait for root + custom ROMs with APPS2SD

I am now wondering ... What is this "cache" ?
Do we really need to clean it periodically?
It would be nice if there is a widget to clean this.
And honestly, I am not impressed with the storage ... 512 RAM seems a lot, but actually it is NOT

I have removed Google earth as it was taking up nearly 22MB which in the grand scheme of things seems to be load of space....

I never understand why they don't a minimum of 1gb internal storage on these devices for apps.

Jabbypants said:
I never understand why they don't a minimum of 1gb internal storage on these devices for apps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
...or just allow for apps to be installed on a memory card from the first place
Seems like that they [Android OS] have realised that without doing so, they will not be able to have storage hungry things such as games to be installed.

36 as I counted, is normal IMO. But yeah, I really hope that you will be able to install applications on your SD card in the future. Not that I want more apps, but I want BETTER apps (which means they will be more MB's). I remember downloading games for the iPod touch that were over 100 MB. They were also off very high quality.
About not allowing installing apps to SD card: I think the reason why it is not allowed is the following.. if you can install something to your SD card, you can easily share it with other over the internet, right? That will mean people will start downloading apps the 'dirty' way! That's the only reason I see.
But Google is very smart and so far keeps giving everybody what they want. I am sure they will find a solution!

gogol said:
I am now wondering ... What is this "cache" ?
Do we really need to clean it periodically?
It would be nice if there is a widget to clean this.
And honestly, I am not impressed with the storage ... 512 RAM seems a lot, but actually it is NOT
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When you use apps, it stores some files in memory for quicker access later. Downside of it is that it takes-up space. Normally you would not want to clear cache that often, but if you're running out of space it helps.
Unfortunately you can only clear cache for each app one-by-one, but here's an app that might make the process easier http://www.appbrain.com/app/com.cerisierbleu.qac

You can not store any apps on your memory card!
I did not know this
I have low space as well!
I have a game which is 20MB, i do not want to delete it beacuse it is the best game I have.
Is there no way to put it on your memory card?

Raminder1992 said:
You can not store any apps on your memory card!
I did not know this
I have low space as well!
I have a game which is 20MB, i do not want to delete it beacuse it is the best game I have.
Is there no way to put it on your memory card?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, you can't put apps on memory card until we have root and get to use cool ROMs like CyanogenMod.
Or until Google adds official support for apps2sd, but I can bet you that root will come first.

the reason why google doesnt allow apps etc to be installed on SD cards is because of security of the system, meaning that through this it would be probably easier to root or hack the device and they re working on some kind of encryption for this, and it will be included in the future update,
someone from this forum posted it somewhere here in this section

I also got low memory on my G1 with Apps2sd. That's because every app stores stuff on the internal memory, the browser cache, google maps cache and so on. My experience showed me that these things are the real memory killer.

cez10 said:
the reason why google doesnt allow apps etc to be installed on SD cards is because of security of the system, meaning that through this it would be probably easier to root or hack the device and they re working on some kind of encryption for this, and it will be included in the future update,
someone from this forum posted it somewhere here in this section
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Google will encrypt that partition of the sdcard so it is secure. IIRC, support for something with the sd card was checked in recently, along with the support for the LED (for the nexus one). I imagine apps2sd is something all android devices will be seeing soon.
Personally, I would be screwed if I couldn't install apps to my sd card on my phone...as stated above, google earth takes up way too much space. Tack on a couple games and a dozen apps? Forget it.

deprecate said:
Google will encrypt that partition of the sdcard so it is secure. IIRC, support for something with the sd card was checked in recently, along with the support for the LED (for the nexus one). I imagine apps2sd is something all android devices will be seeing soon.
Personally, I would be screwed if I couldn't install apps to my sd card on my phone...as stated above, google earth takes up way too much space. Tack on a couple games and a dozen apps? Forget it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
right. does that mean we wont be able to replace the sd cards unless we 'install' some additional files onto it?
and I think if google wont do this pretty quickly, droid might loose a vast amount of clients, because this is one of the reasons why iphone is so popular.
My mate just told me today he's willing to buy a new phone soon, and when I asked him what phone, he obviously said an iphone why do people always follow the crowd and buy anything that's most advertised :|

cez10 said:
the reason why google doesnt allow apps etc to be installed on SD cards is because of security of the system, meaning that through this it would be probably easier to root or hack the device and they re working on some kind of encryption for this, and it will be included in the future update,
someone from this forum posted it somewhere here in this section
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought it was due to the fact that the paid apps wouldn't be secure on the sd card, opening the gate further for app piracy and thus they were working on a solution to allow copy protection on the sd card.

I think this issue just turned me off the Desire and now I'm leaning towards the Nexus 1. I like to install plenty of apps so this could be a real issue for me

All android phones are the same, its just a matter of time before its sorted you can still get plenty of apps on, personally i can't see how anyone would need more than 10.

cez10 said:
right. does that mean we wont be able to replace the sd cards unless we 'install' some additional files onto it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not sure to be honest. I would assume that you will be able to mount your sd card and copy all of the contents off the secured/encrypted partition if your machine recognizes that partition type...then again, maybe you won't be able to.
If you upgrade sd cards, you may have to start all over with installing to the sd card. Good question.
and I think if google wont do this pretty quickly, droid might loose a vast amount of clients, because this is one of the reasons why iphone is so popular.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the iphone is popular for lots of reasons; app support being at the top...but I would imagine the viral advertising and the "everyone has it" thing doesn't hurt.
Funnily enough, Android is almost on as many mobile devices as iphoneOS (according to an admob metric report). So the "everyone has it" argument is about to become a moot point.
My mate just told me today he's willing to buy a new phone soon, and when I asked him what phone, he obviously said an iphone why do people always follow the crowd and buy anything that's most advertised :|
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
people want what they know, what they see, what they hear is the best...apple has done an amazing job doing this with their products.

Jabbypants said:
All android phones are the same, its just a matter of time before its sorted you can still get plenty of apps on, personally i can't see how anyone would need more than 10.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
more than 10 apps? Are you trolling?

Don't think i have even got 10 on mine atm and can't think i ever had more on any Android i had so far, hero/milestone.

[Q] anything like HBOOT to repartition internal memory?

Hi!
As I understand the Xperia S has a huge internal memory of 32GB, but this is parted into two partitions: One for Apps (known as /data on my HTC Desire) and one for all kinds of user data (/sdcard).
Right?
I know I can move most parts of most apps to /sdcard with internal functions. But not all apps.
So I would like to have more space for apps - is there anything like HBOOT / http://alpharev.nl to repartition the internal memory for the XS? Anything to make the app partition e.g. 5GB instead of 2GB?
Or: Is there any custom rom which uses the whole internal memory at once with no extra partition mounted to /sdcard? As I understand, this is the way google wants to handle this in ICS. One big internal memory for all purposes.

First, there is a SD card, a data one, a system one, a cache one, boot and maybe some obscure ones. Second, as I'm aware, no known way to increase it. And you don't need a huge partition. You can have a hell lot of apps with 2 GB. The data goes to SD card anyway.
Sent from my LT26i using Tapatalk HD

Felimenta97 said:
And you don't need a huge partition. You can have a hell lot of apps with 2 GB. The data goes to SD card anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
to be honest, I am not sure about this.
At the moment I have a Desire with /data 1,5GB (via ext4 partition). I have only 200MB(!) left!
I have no big games on the phones. Some apps are moved to sd, additional. And there are no many big ones on my phone.
e.g. Facebook has 50MB and cannot be moved. G+ 30MB and I want to use the widget, so it is not moved. Amazon App Shop 30MB, cannot be moved. wetter.com 20MB and this is after moving!
And these are all of the huge apps on my Desire with only 200MB free. the other apps are odds and ends.
So, projected to the XS I would have 700MB free in the moment. And there are many apps I had to delete on my Desire and I want do install them. e.g. the Simpsons game 100MB and cannot be moved ...
/data 233MB free of 1511MB:
/data/app 426MB
/data/dalvik-cache 387MB
/data/data 300MB
/data/app_s 97MB

I, sometimes get to go through my apps list, I look at each one of them, and think: Do I really need this app? I can't uninstall it and download when I need it again?
It may help you.
Sent from my LT26i using Tapatalk HD

[sarcasm mode=on>
hm, this sounds like shortage management. And when I by a new phone I do not want to do shortage management, particularly on a phone with 32GB.
[/]
But seriously: my smartphone is my digital Swiss army knife. I do not want to think about "do I need this app the next week?" And even worse "there was an app long time ago which would help me now, but which one from the bunch of similar named app was the one?"

stm999999999 said:
[sarcasm mode=on>
hm, this sounds like shortage management. And when I by a new phone I do not want to do shortage management, particularly on a phone with 32GB.
[/]
But seriously: my smartphone is my digital Swiss army knife. I do not want to think about "do I need this app the next week?" And even worse "there was an app long time ago which would help me now, but which one from the bunch of similar named app was the one?"
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I get it... Well. I'm running out of options right now... Maybe move some apps to system? Needs root, tough
Sent from my LT26i using Tapatalk HD

dont know if this is what youre looking for:
well for storage you have 2gig phone memory and 25.80 internal memory,
all of the apps installed on your phone if you didnt move to sd will go to the phone memory which is 2gig,
all of the datas,obb files,pictures,movies,etc.. will be loaded on internal memory,
so the 2gig memory on your phone will be big enough for all your apps, meaning only the .apk files are stored on phone memory
and not the data.

ouya running out of space?

My OUYA is alerting me its running out of space.
I honestly dont have many things installed. But I think Order and Chaos takes up the most room even though its like 300mbs in the app list.
I am looking to move some stuff to my 32gig external flash but I dont see the option "move to usb" in the app properties, is there a way to move the games and apps or do I have to uninstall and then reinstall to external?
thanks

tevil said:
My OUYA is alerting me its running out of space.
I honestly dont have many things installed. But I think Order and Chaos takes up the most room even though its like 300mbs in the app list.
I am looking to move some stuff to my 32gig external flash but I dont see the option "move to usb" in the app properties, is there a way to move the games and apps or do I have to uninstall and then reinstall to external?
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In the "make" or "play" section where you launch apps hit the U button on controller (only works on newer firmware I think). It may be app data taking all your space, look for obb and data in the android folder.

adfurgerson said:
In the "make" or "play" section where you launch apps hit the U button on controller (only works on newer firmware I think). It may be app data taking all your space, look for obb and data in the android folder.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah I think thats what it is cause O&C downloaded like 1.5 gigs of stuff.
Can that be moved to external space?

tevil said:
yeah I think thats what it is cause O&C downloaded like 1.5 gigs of stuff.
Can that be moved to external space?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not sure, try it if it does not work then move it back.

[Q] Can't install apps when Tab S 10.5 gets to about 500MB remaining

Hi all,
I have a Galaxy S 10.5 (16GB) that I picked up in September of 2014. I love the thing but it's showing a weird issue. Any time I hit 500MB storage remaining, Google Play Store will no longer update apps. It gives me an insufficient storage notification. I can go in and clear the cache and everything is great - until I get to 500MB remaining again. Then I have to find more space again.
I've had a 64GB SD card installed in the device since I purchased it. I store music there and move apps that support it to the memory card. I was hoping that having the SD card would make the (insufficient) 16GB of storage liveable. It hasn't and the 500MB has only made it more challenging.
Has anyone seen this before and/or have any ideas what might be going on here.
Thanks!

I think that might be the limit of free space that must be available for the System to use. Think of it like a fail-safe approach to keep the tablet running smooth while it is constantly caching, deleting/creating temporary files, and allocating memory space in the background. Without sufficient free space available, it can't do those functions.

LakersDroid said:
I think that might be the limit of free space that must be available for the System to use. Think of it like a fail-safe approach to keep the tablet running smooth while it is constantly caching, deleting/creating temporary files, and allocating memory space in the background. Without sufficient free space available, it can't do those functions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. That seems reasonable. It's particularly annoying because the OS occupies almost 5GB of the 16GB I'm supposed to have. I'd rather Google/Samsung throw that 500MB into the 5GB they already have rather than tease me by telling me it's available but essentially unusable.
I appreciate you sharing your thoughts.

<rant> First and foremost I completely agree that Google's handling of external memory, or their lack of wanting to handle, or let users use microSD cards is wrong. The way it handles moving program data to external cards in kitkat is horrible and lollipop honestly is not much better, but at least users were determined to be sufficiently old and intelligent enough to be "allowed" to grant programs permission to manage our external data instead of only letting oem programs that ability. </rant>
With all that said the answer to your issue is even more simple then that. All Programs take up at minium 2x the space while you are updating them. You have the apk (the update) and the actual program existing at the same time. Not to mention that the programs tend to take up more space then apk's due to compression of resources and other things. Given those 2 things instead of trusting that the user won't download a 200MB update and seeing it is only 200MB put annother 200MB of music on the device while it is downloading causing issues google puts a free space cap.
I always thought that the system memory is included in that block of space the 4-5GB that the OS and bloat live in.

There HAS to be some spaced reserved for the OS or the tablet would crash. data is constantly written to the data partition which is part of the internal storage and this space is needed to run the device.
I have run into this issue myself, but its easily resolved by moving all unecessary stuff to the sd card - downloads, music, media, apps e.t.c.
All it takes is a bit of housekeeping every now and then. Download an app called All-in-One toolkit from play, it will find loads of junk files which you can safely delete to free a fair amount of space.
However I agree it was rather stingy of Samsung not to include 32gGb of internal storage which should be the minium for a so called flagship device.

Yeah, this issue of less than usable sdcard is also worrying me.
I had a Galaxy tab 8.9 (which came to the market in 2011) before this. It had 16gb and no SDcard. Storage was a pain.
AFAIR, also there is no Gmail syncing when below the limit. Imagine the frustration not getting your emails and trying to find something to delete.
I was hoping the SD card in the tab S would be more usable, but alas. At least Lollipop is slightly better, but only if the apps wanna use it. I get frustrated when dictionary app Merriam Webster for example stores its 100 megabytes data file in internal memory. Same with TED app videos.
And of course, current Rom and OS used almost double the storage for system as the tablet from 2011. Android 4.0.4. Apps have become bigger too.
Sent from my HTC One X+ (64g of internal memory, yeah!)

fred_be9300 said:
At least Lollipop is slightly better, but only if the apps wanna use it. I get frustrated when dictionary app Merriam Webster for example stores its 100 megabytes data file in internal memory. Same with TED app videos.
And of course, current Rom and OS used almost double the storage for system as the tablet from 2011. Android 4.0.4. Apps have become bigger too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Precisely! The Samsung text-to-speech engine takes up at least 300MB of storage. Facebook consumes about 200MB. The Kindle app (sort of understandable since I have a lot of books) uses almost 200MB. Very little of any of that can be saved to my 60% empty SD card. Add in Newsstand and other similar apps and space is eaten up very quickly. Super annoying...

I'm now discovering this problem and it is really annoying. Is rooting the only way of getting round this? I don't want to do this but I don't think I have an option. I only have 500MB left on internal but 40GB on my 64GB micro sd.

mightywhites29111971 said:
I'm now discovering this problem and it is really annoying.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not even sure that rooting would change much about this. With rooting you can remove some of the limitations in KK and Lp about writing to the external sd card...
But this will not get applications to spontaneously use the external sd card instead of the internal SD card, for their data.
I know there used to be tricks like a2sd, link2sd, and other variations... which were widespread 3-5 years ago. To make the device believe, through symlinks and crafted mounts, that an ext3 partition on the sdcard was a part of internal data. It was often cause for instability if executed less than perfectly.
I had this on my HTC Desire, a "flagship" phone from 5 years ago, with top of the line hardware: cpu , mem, screen, but with only 250mb for internal data.
I have not searched for it specifically but so far I've not seen anybody talking about those tricks for this device.

Disk Usage
This is a free app that shows you exactly where your storage space has gone. None of this nebulous "miscellaneous" nonsense. I was able to recover about my existing free space in extra space from stuff I didn't realize was still in my storage. While this is not a solution to not being able to store all your apps on an external card it might just help a few ppl get that extra space they need.

acdbrn2000 said:
Disk Usage
This is a free app that shows you exactly where your storage space has gone. None of this nebulous "miscellaneous" nonsense. I was able to recover about my existing free space in extra space from stuff I didn't realize was still in my storage. While this is not a solution to not being able to store all your apps on an external card it might just help a few ppl get that extra space they need.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for that. Have downloaded that and had a look and I have nearly 5GB of OBB files! I think this is where my issue is, and I think the only way I can resolve this for myself is to root and use an app that transfers OBB files to SD.

mightywhites29111971 said:
Thanks for that. Have downloaded that and had a look and I have nearly 5GB of OBB files! I think this is where my issue is, and I think the only way I can resolve this for myself is to root and use an app that transfers OBB files to SD.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope that works out for you. I gave up on the idea of moving obb files that didn't want to move (way too much hassle for something that does not always work right) and instead decided to have less massive obb apps (games) installed at one time. I can only do one thing at a time anyways.

how to clean other files with huge size in internal memory in storage analyzer

I have my Galaxy Note 10 + for 11 months now, with 256 gb internal storage and 128 GB SD card and a few months ago I was notified that my internal storage space was almost full. It was very difficult for me to believe this, as I do not have nearly enough pictures to be taking that up (pictures and videos are routinely uploaded to Google Drive and are stored on external SD card), and all of my music is loaded onto an SD card.
I have cleaned recycle bin but something is getting piled up day by day reducing main storage of the phone base memory. When actually measured the folders account only 60 gb in base memory but there is very less free memory.
Looking at the storage analysis, the problem seems to come from a large amount of space being taken up in the "other" category, but I cannot figure out what is categorized under "other" or why it is filling. How do I identify these files and delete them if unwanted?

SD Maid Pro works great for me. I can confirm that it can delete files. Just did some storage management yesterday.

lostman004 said:
SD Maid Pro works great for me. I can confirm that it can delete files. Just did some storage management yesterday.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good app...
The original samsung Device Care that was loaded with Pie cleans very well.
Don't update it... the new sanitized version sucks.
I put the phone in airplane mode when using it and keep it package block it otherwise. It's probably chinese spyware but works well if gagged, lol.

I use a tool called "DiskUsage". Try installing that from the play store and give it a shot...
Sent from my SM-N976V using Tapatalk

KruseLudsMobile said:
I use a tool called "DiskUsage". Try installing that from the play store and give it a shot...
Sent from my SM-N976V using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks but i does not allow to delete. how to delete the identified junk?

knn1111 said:
Thanks but i does not allow to delete. how to delete the identified junk?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check browser caches/data etc.
Go down the line with all apps including system ones. Google is a hog. See who'd hogging the beef....
I use SD Maid Pro to clean, it does a good job.
Just about time to do a reload anyway. Be picky about the apps you put on the new load.

blackhawk said:
Check browser caches/data etc.
Go down the line with all apps including system ones. Google is a hog. See who'd hogging the beef....
I use SD Maid Pro to clean, it does a good job.
Just about time to do a reload anyway. Be picky about the apps you put on the new load.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks but My problem is not resolved even after buying the pro version . How to clean "other" with huge size in internal memory in analyse storage. The size of other is still 179 gb

knn1111 said:
Thanks but My problem is not resolved even after buying the pro version . How to clean "other" with huge size in internal memory in analyse storage. The size of other is still 179 gb
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use the file manager and sort by size, what's on top?
You need to manually hunt for it. Check app data especially Google's. SD Maid doesn't delete app data.
Get the Windows driver for it and view the Android on the PC. Play with it. Off load some of the files and watch how it behaves. Does internal memory unexpectedly keep being used up?
You can try clearing the system cache on the boot menu but I don't think it will help. Never hurts.
That copy sounds like it's getting old... maybe reload time anyway.