How to Easily Free Up Space on Your Samsung Galaxy Without Losing Photos

The maximum storage capacity of smartphones has increased over time and some Samsung models offer up to 1TB of internal storage. However, the average smartphone user usually chooses the 128GB or 256GB model. If your phone’s memory is almost full and you don’t want to delete existing media, you have several options to free up space. Before starting a cleaning session, you need to check the total memory used by the images stored on your phone.

Samsung’s My Files app can tell you all the storage stats and even sort files into different categories. Launch the app and tap the Images icon in the top section. It will list the images on your phone with the total occupied size at the top right corner. Deleting unused apps is a great place to start because it cleans up your app drawer and home screen. Long press the app icon and select Uninstall. Opt for rarely used apps like pre-installed Samsung apps, games and other social apps, and tools that border on adware.

Social media apps and games store huge app caches for faster loading, sometimes several gigabytes in size, and cleaning them can free up space to some extent. The app will slowly rebuild it and you will have to repeat the process in a few weeks. Long press the app icon, select App Info. Next, tap on Storage and select the Clear cache option.

Recycle Bin is a security feature to keep accidentally deleted files. Even when you delete items in bulk, the app keeps them in the Trash for 30 days, still taking up storage space. Before hastily deleting other photos, you should first empty the Trash. Repeat the following steps:

1. Open the My Files app.
2. Tap on the Trash option.
3. Tap the vertical ellipsis button at the top right.
4. Select Empty.
5. Tap Delete to clean the Trash.

The Gallery app also shows a Trash option, but it only shows media files that you put in the Trash. Deleting the items from the Trash is enough.

Next, delete large files and duplicates on your phone. These will mostly be video files, screen recordings, or documents that you share or download repeatedly. Here’s how to do it:

1. Open the My Files app.
2. Tap Manage Storage and select Large Files.
3. Manually select files (more than 500 MB) and tap Delete.
4. Tap Delete again.
5. Go back and tap Duplicate Files.
6. Select all items and tap Delete All.

The Manage Storage tool also displays some suggestions. Check the files and delete those you don’t need. Additionally, you may have downloaded multiple movies and shows in streaming apps like Netflix without ever bothering to delete them. These high-quality video files take up a lot of space and also do not appear in the storage calculator in the My Files app. Streaming apps encrypt them to prevent piracy, and you have to manually open each app’s download folder and clear it.

If all the above methods fail to free up much of the storage space on your Samsung phone, it’s time to move important files elsewhere. You can connect a USB drive via an OTG adapter or move the files to an SD card. Connecting the phone to a PC and copying large files is also an option. All of these methods favor local data storage, but are not very practical. SD cards in smartphones are now rare and USB storage is a temporary option since you have to physically connect and transfer files after a few weeks of constant use.

Instead, you can use a cloud storage provider like Google Drive or Dropbox to back up your important files. The free tier can store your important files and you can use the PC transfer option when space runs out. You can also purchase a cloud storage subscription with ample storage space, like Google One, which offers up to 5TB of storage capacity. Choosing a cloud storage service ensures that your files sync automatically and you can access them whenever needed. Cloud storage services use strong security measures to protect your files, provide redundancy by maintaining multiple copies of data, and require no maintenance on your part.