Android Internal Storage Low

[Potamoi]

I have a Samsung Galaxy S10+ phone (a few generations old). Earlier in the year I noticed my internal storage was getting low which I thought a little strange since it is 128Gb with an additional 512 Micro SD storage.

Suspecting my habit of using photos and video instead of words especially in LINE lead me to look at the usual suspects of where the photos are being stored etc. Perhaps the SDCardBackUp folder? I copied that to my home server and deleted the contents which helped with the urgent need to free up some space.

The other day I needed to replace my Security Camera DVR and the shop needed me to add an app to my phone to ensure all was working. No space again so I deleted a couple of useless apps and Netflix, the latter is kind of nice to have when hotel rooms have TV's one can cast to it but those same TV's usually have the Netflix app on them and I nearly always travel with a laptop anyway so off with its head.

This morning I remembered there was definitely an internal storage issue on my phone so I went looking. I tapped Settings, Apps, then under Your Apps I sorted by size. The result showed me Audible, LINE, OneDrive and Outlook Apps were all using 9gb, 4gb, 2gb and 1gb in that order but the real culprit was an app I have only used like three times.

SIGNAL was using >65gb of internal space! In my rush to delete the offending source I deleted the cache and data so I can't say which was too big. Again, since this is not something I use often and don't need to keep the history, I was unbothered. (LINE would have been more of a hardship to delete all history since I use it daily and for work too).

I don't know why this app took so much space but I will keep an eye on it henceforth. In any case, this gave me back half of my internal storage so I am happy. Perhaps some of our esteemed UM members have a similar issue?

I looked quickly to see if there is a YouTube video to show others and of course someone did post one:


NOTE: Clearing app data will reset it like a new app so you need to sign in and let it access your contacts etc again.

[tamada]

We chatted about similar the other day. My phone was showing only 2% of 64 Gb memory available and the culprit was the Tune In radio app with something like a 35 Gb cache. I cleared the apps cache and the two podcasts that had been downloaded and it made no difference. I deleted the app completely and when I went to check the memory usage, it looked unchanged then the phone locked up. After restarting, the free memory is now 51%.

I have a suspicion that although the app only showed the two, current podcasts, the previous ones were still all stored in the cache. I only use Tune In maybe 2 or 3 times a week and I will admit that I wasn't following the two podcasts as often as before so I haven't resubscribed to them.

[Whistler]

Go to apps in settings and delete cache on apps, typically sorts most problems

[sometimewoodworker]

All of this shows that you really need to keep an eye on data usage.

My personal data hogs are Photos and document storage, all the others are ephemeral or small

64K is only sufficient if you store virtually no data on your devices
Some apps will store data for security,
Signal is probably one of the most secure communications apps but it doesn’t hold your hand so you have to manage it yourself.

[Potamoi]

Signal is probably one of the most secure communications apps but it doesn’t hold your hand so you have to manage it yourself.

Looking further, I see Signal had issues with some older versions. This guy said his cache was 103 GB!

https://www.reddit.com/r/signal/comment ... ache_data/

Another poster reckons all chat/photos/videos are encrypted in the cache which makes sense if I ever had any of that in Signal. I have a mind to remove it all together but will keep an eye on it instead.

[tamada]

Without phoning a friend, what does Signal do?

[Potamoi]

It's a messaging app very secure even more so than Telegram apparently.
I guess it's a matter on how much security you need vs convenience and adoption.