{"id":939995,"date":"2026-10-25T04:14:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T04:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/939995\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T04:14:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T04:14:13","slug":"i-recovered-27gb-of-storage-using-a-samsung-feature-id-been-ignoring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/939995\/","title":{"rendered":"I recovered 27GB of storage using a Samsung feature I’d been ignoring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fixed internal storage with no SD card slot<\/a> is a recipe for disaster. Sadly, though, that\u2019s the reality on most phones now, including my Galaxy S26. But all hope is not lost. Galaxy phones do come with useful tools for freeing up storage space, so you don\u2019t need third-party apps to help you with the storage situation. <\/p>\n

I never bothered using these suggestions until recently, but after seeing how much space they helped me reclaim, I can\u2019t stop talking about them.<\/p>\n


\n \"Samsung<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\tI used the secret dial code to free up 2GB of space on my Galaxy phone
\n\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Free up storage in a pinch.<\/p>\n

Go beyond the basics<\/p>\n

Every Android phone comes with a storage menu, but they’re usually pretty basic. They show a breakdown of how storage is used across apps, games, photos, videos, documents, and other files. That tells you where your storage is going but doesn\u2019t actually help you clear it. Galaxy phones do it differently. If you go to Settings > Device care > Storage, you\u2019ll see various suggestions to free up storage space. <\/p>\n

At the top, you\u2019ll see three categories: Large files, Duplicate files, and Recycle bin, each labeled with exactly how much storage it\u2019s taking. Tap into any one of them and you\u2019ll see a list of files. From there, select anything you don\u2019t need and delete it.<\/p>\n

This is just the start, though. Scroll further down in the storage menu, and you\u2019ll see sections like old media files, installation files, downloads, pre-edit backups, compressed files, unused apps, and old app data. Most of these are pretty self-explanatory, but each section also includes a brief description of what it includes. So yes, the storage menu is essentially doing the same thing the \u201cClean\u201d tab in Files by Google app<\/a> does, and since it\u2019s built-in, there\u2019s no need to install anything extra. <\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t see a specific section like \u201cCompressed files\u201d or \u201cOther app data,\u201d it means One UI couldn\u2019t find any files that fall into that category.<\/p>\n

Not everything that\u2019s old is useless, of course. But these sections let you see files that\u2019ve been on your phone for months, so you can review them easily from one place. On my Galaxy S26, going through all these suggestions helped me claw back close to 12GB. Most importantly, I didn\u2019t lose any important files or apps while doing this.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t forget about those \u201cOther files\u201d<\/p>\n

This is where the real clutter hides<\/p>\n

\"Other
\n Tashreef Shareef \/ MakeUseOfCredit:\u00a0Tashreef Shareef \/ MakeUseOf<\/p>\n

One UI\u2019s storage cleanup suggestions are helpful, but they don\u2019t cover everything. If you go to Internal storage and check the full breakdown, you\u2019ll also see the \u201cOther files\u201d section. Tap it, and you\u2019ll see three subsections: Pre-edit backups, Pending files, and Uncategorized.<\/p>\n

Pre-edit backups are older versions of photos and videos that Samsung keeps every time you edit something. When you overwrite edits on an image or a video, the Gallery app keeps the older versions as a backup, in case you want to undo those changes later. Most of the time, you don\u2019t need these backups, and thankfully, you can easily delete them from the Other files menu.<\/p>\n

Pending files are a little different. These are downloads, uploads, moves, or deletions that never finished for some reason. It could be a download that stopped halfway through or an upload that didn’t complete. Since these files are technically still in progress, they come under this section. The big catch here is that you can\u2019t remove these files directly from this menu. You\u2019ll need to tap the info icon next to each file in this section to see where it\u2019s located, then use the Files app to delete them manually.<\/p>\n

Finally, the Uncategorized section is the catch-all for everything else that doesn\u2019t fit into any of the other two categories. These could be temporary files or cached data that won\u2019t show up inside the Gallery app or anywhere else, but are still stored on your phone. Nine times out of ten, you don\u2019t need any of it. You can see where they are stored and delete them manually using the Files app. <\/p>\n

For me, deleting these \u201cOther files\u201d helped free up 15GB of storage<\/a>. This number will obviously be different for you. It all comes down to how long you\u2019ve been using your Galaxy phone and when was the last time you did a cleanup. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s still more to do\u2026<\/p>\n

The above suggestions are helpful, but there\u2019s still more you can do. You can use Android\u2019s app archiving feature<\/a> to reduce the size of apps you aren\u2019t using but don\u2019t want to delete. For the rest of your apps, deleting cache data is a great help. Doing these things won\u2019t affect your personal data, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fixed internal storage with no SD card slot is a recipe for disaster. Sadly, though, that\u2019s the reality…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":939996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[64,63,203,105],"class_list":["post-939995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mobile","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=939995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/939996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=939995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=939995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=939995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}