Tips on how to free up storage on my phone?

[cindyyy]

Can someone give me some tips on how free up storage? I tried deleting cache but that doesnt work

[GEMSTONE84]

I can try to help if you can provide a little more information.  What make and model is your device including stock memory level and what software version do you currently have. You can find the software version in settings under the "about" tab, from there you may need to select software information and look for One UI version and Android version.

[cindyyy]

Thanks so much, The device is The Samsung A12 with 4.1 for UI core and Android 12

[GEMSTONE84]

I am not personally familiar with this device but most steps are going to be the same across all samsungs with minor variations depending on software version and personal customization of settings but I'll do my best, if something doesn't match exactly what you are seeing on your device try to use common sense to determine what the most likely alternate option is for your device

couple more questions - do you have external memory on your device ( sd card) if so what is its storage capacity ?   do you use any kind of cloud storage ( google drive/ photos, onedrive, samsung cloud etc) if so do you have that accound linked to your phone and set up to back up your device 

ok so the first thing to do is figure out what is using storage on your device.  to figure this out  you can follow steps below , from here you should see a detailed list of what is utilizing storage on your device. Depending on how you use your device  you will likely see things like videos, images/photos, apps, documents, audio files, and system (everyone will have system and it can be a fairly significant amount of storage that it is using, this is what the phone needs to operate and includes all the software necessary for the phone to function and typically is not able to be modified. We will focus on the other catagories. Please respond with your top consumers of storage.

go into settings 

device care         (when you are at this step you should also see "optimize now" you can click that to clear out temporary items that are using storage, it should only take a few seconds and then proceed through the steps to view storage utilization )

storage 

[cindyyy]

To answer your questions no i dont have an sd card, no i dont have any type of backup cloud storage and my top consumers of storage are just apps and system

[GEMSTONE84]

what is the total storage for your device and what is available now ?  How much is being allocated to system and what is your apps utilizing?  You should be able to click on apps from the previous steps you took and see a breakdown of how much each app is specifically using .  If you don't mind sharing, what are your biggest consumers?

[cindyyy]

My total storage is 32 GB and rn only 1.4 is available and some of my biggest consumers are like social media apps such as tiktok and instagram

[GEMSTONE84]

from what I can find it looks like that device only came in a 32gb option, with the usable storage being 19.4 gb  after accounting for system.

 if that is the case you are likely going to continue to run into storage/ memory complications, 19 gb's is not a ideal/ functional amount of storage for most people and you would save yourself a lot of frustration by investing in an sd card.  You can find sd cards for a pretty reasonable price nowadays for one that is not fancy. Even a 32 gb one would double your available storage . that device can use a sd card up to 1 tb.

[theycallmegaddy]

I'm not exactly sure how much the addition of an SD card is supposed to help the situation. I purchased a tier 10(fastest data transfer speed) A3(capable of storing & running apps from from card) 128Gb Elite series card & there's honestly hardly any noticeable performance benefits & the more apps than not aren't even eligible move over anyway. Even if I'm able to store them, there's always such a huge loss in performance speed that the frustration alone overshadows the modest benefits that were gained. I'm not even entirely convinced there's actually any measurable benefits after taking everything into consideration. Sometimes even when I try to move data from internal to external, a copy of the data is left behind on the internal anyway, which ultimately just results in doubling the amount of storage that particular file is claiming. 

In any case, you should for sure make it a point to mention the drastic difference in capabilities when considering the type of SD card to get. Depending on the brand, the difference in transfer speed between class 1 & class 10 is crazy. I had a class 1 only capable of 4Mb/s (it was honestly slower) & I've had a class 10 with upwards of 120Mb/s. Also, the (A) insignia determines app processing capabilites. An A1 won't even store apps at all. An A2 is capable of storing apps, but isn't capable of booting or running them from the SD card, which basically means all you have is a non-bootable flash drive. An A3 will allow full functionality, but there's still a pretty annoying performance lag that comes with it. There are also specific cards engineered to encode & process high quality video more efficiently. Unless you opt for a high-end solid state drive rather than an SD card, performance speed will always be an issue most people won't be able to get past. The best advice I can give is to always buy the device with largest available internal storage. If not, you'll be strung along exploring an entire catalog of aftermarket accessories claiming to enhance your device's native capabilities & they're always sure to disappoint. 

[GEMSTONE84]

If you don't already have one, I would recommend getting a free personal google account. That would provide you 15 gb's of cloud storage for free with options to upgrade or increase if necessary for a fee.  

As  far as creating more storage availability with what you are currently working with these are the best options 

optimize and clean storage and memory

   settings > device care > triple dots > more options > advanced > auto optimization  (you can enable automatic device optimization on a reoccurring schedule) 

settings > device care > memory > clean now   (from here you can also click view more to see how much is being used by what or click apps not recently used to help with making a decision on what to remove from the device