How to Clean Up Your Android Smartphone the Right Way

40,000 screenshots in the Photos app, countless unused apps, phone and cloud storage full: We all know it. I’ll show you how to do a smartphone reset at the end of the year and get storage space, order and clarity back on your Android smartphone. Mine is the Xiaomi 15T Pro, but the tips work on all Android smartphones, regardless of the manufacturer.

1. Clean up the photo library

Endless screenshots, blurry selfies and the same sunset a thousand times: Nobody looks at those anymore. The final boss in the fight for storage space can be tackled from two sides.

1. The “Clean up” function in the Gallery app: On Xiaomi, among other things, it offers to delete screenshots and duplicate photos. Not blindly: You have it show them to you and choose what you want to keep and what can go.
2. Google Photos: If you sync your gallery with it, tap your profile picture and then “Free up space on device”. The app checks which shots are already backed up in the cloud, and you can delete them from the device. They disappear from the Gallery app, and you then only see them in Google Photos and can download them again if needed. That frees up a lot of storage space.

2. Relieve the cloud storage in Google Photos

Cloud storage costs money. Go to your profile picture, then Photos settings, Backup, Manage storage and “Large photos and videos”. What you no longer need, you delete. There are also the tabs “Unsupported videos” and “Unimportant content”. Mostly those are screenshots, which you can delete as needed.

3. Delete unused apps

Apps pile up faster than mosquitoes at a garden party: a photo editor, a shopping app, used once and then it just sits there gathering dust. Go to Apps in Settings and have them shown by when you last used them. Anything that says “never used”, you delete. Then your smartphone and the app drawer can breathe again.

4. Clear the apps’ cache

For the apps you keep, it’s worth clearing the cache.

1. Sort the apps by storage used and see which use the most. Typical are Instagram or the Chrome browser.
2. Tap Storage, and you see how much space the cache takes up.
3. Tap “Clear data” and choose “Clear cache”. Definitely not “Clear all data”, otherwise all of the app’s data is gone, such as the bookmarks in the browser.

Once you’ve done that for all the apps with a large cache, you have more storage space, and the smartphone runs faster again.

5. Restart the smartphone

Restart your smartphone now and then. That closes all running processes, partly including background processes, and clears the memory. It sounds trivial, but it’s effective.

6. Sort the home screen

The home screen likes to fill up with widgets and apps. We Android users can choose whether all apps sit on the home screen or disappear into the app drawer, which you reach with a swipe up. I always use the app drawer, so that only the apps I need daily are on the home screen.

• Bottom bar (the essentials): Phone, Calendar, email, WhatsApp and the camera app.
• Above that: Apps I use several times a day: Spotify, YouTube, YouTube Studio and my beloved Google Keep notes app. My insider tip: I write everything in there, shopping list, to-dos, the name of a recommended restaurant or hotel. It’s simple and syncs across all devices because it’s a Google app.
• A folder with apps I need often, but not daily. If you set it to XXL or expanded, you can get to the apps directly without opening the folder.
• Another page with apps like SMS or saved web pages.
• Widgets: They’re cute, but they can seriously go.

That gives me a mix of tidy and still having everything important within reach. With that, I’ve decluttered my smartphone and my head and freed up storage space on the side.