All of the apps that were on the internal storage still work nominally, however I am unable to take pictures, or download any kind of data. All of the images, and other data that were on the internal storage of the device cannot be found in the file explorer anymore. When trying to download data I get the warning that there is no more storage on the device, but when I delete apps that are clearly larger than the file I want to download the problem persists. When I try to access the data from a PC via USB the internal storage doesnât even show up. What I find especially weird is that I am still able to download audio files in the spotify app, and listen to them while offline.
Help!
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Happens to all of us at least once. The answer is complicated, but letâs think of it this way.
Imagine you are living in a tiny house, full of appliances, furnitures, and a lot of things that it made your tiny house too crowded and close to being full. You have a large package being delivered to you and will arrive anytime soon. To make sure that there is enough space in your house for that package, you decided to tidy up things. All of the effort made a very small space in front of your doorstep. Very small, but just enough for the large package to fit in.
The large package finally arrived. It fits to the very small space neatly and effortlessly. You opened it, and you have another problem in your hands. The contents of the package is a disassembled double-decker bed. If assembled, it will take up an even larger space than the package. Even if you tidy up things again, there will be not enough space for you to assemble the double-decker bed.
Same as apps. Google Play may tell you that the size of the app is only 40mb, but once that app is installed, it may take even larger space, possibly 200mb. Itâs because app packages are just simply compressed files (you can compare them to .zip) that needs to be decompressed to be installed in your system. You may have that 40mb of storage space saved for that particular app, but you also need an additional storage space in order for that app to decompress the necessary files it needs to function. That is why Google Play gives you a heads-up, a warning, or even prohibit you from installing an app even though you have enough storage space for it. It simply estimates that your storage space may not handle the decompressed size of that app once it is completely installed.
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If youâre getting the error message âinsufficient storage availableâ you need to delete the app cache. This is automated by a free app, or can be manually achieved by deleting individual app caches.
The âinsufficient storage availableâ error often pops up if you have moved large amounts of media from the Android deviceâs physical storage to a microSD card, and is caused by the cache not being properly erased.
You can clear your app cache in a matter of seconds or a few minutes, depending on just how bad the problem is on your device. If it allows you to install it, downloading a small (around 2MB) app can automatically clear the app cache on your behalf; if your phone wonât allow the installation then youâll need to manually go through deleting the cache for each app.
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Youâre talking about a phone.
Storage is partitioned. You donât have enough available space left on the partition you download to, even though you have a lot of space available in other partitions.
Not much you can do about it. You canât repartition storage to get more space to download to. (And you canât download to other partitions - thereâs only one user partition.)
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If youâre getting an error message about insufficient storage space when youâre trying to install an app, that means your device storage is full , here are a few things you can try.
Uninstall unused apps: If your device has limited storage space, you can free up some space by uninstalling apps you donât use.
Move apps to an SD card: Try moving some of your apps to an SD card if you have one available. This will free up space on your device so you can install the app.
Clear your app cache: Clearing your app cache can also help free up some space. You can do this by going to your deviceâs Settings > Apps > select the app > Storage > Clear Cache.
I hope this helps! If youâre still having trouble, please let us know so we can investigate further.
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âOtherâ includes installed apps and their data. It also includes your deviceâs system files as well (which takes up 2-5GB depending on the device).
Free up more space by uninstalling apps you donât need.
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To see whatâs taking up space, in the settings of the phone select device maintenance â Storage â ⎠â Storage Settings, tap on each row to see its content. Alternatively install DiskUsage.
The internal storage of the file manager is the /data â media â 0 folder, so it wonât show the entire space. This does not include /data â data â (name of app).
in /data there is the
long term app and system data (settings, unsent mail, and whatnot)
cache (images from the internet are saved to the storage because the storage is generally faster than the internet and it saves data, low resolution copies of images for faster loading when there are 50 images on the screen, etc)
dalvik cache (excluding useless parts of apps, and the most commonly used parts of apps are made more efficient)
the phone attempting to explain whatâs going on at a certain time for the user to diagnose errors for use in for example *#9900#.
Android itself also takes up space (/system) and so on
You can clear the cache in settings â Applications â Application Manager â select an app â Clear Cache.
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Iâm fairly sure when you move an app to the SD card it doesnât move everything, thatâs why it still takes up space on your internal storage