I could not stop this Android bug from taking in up all of my phone’s storage

When you have been employing the similar cell phone for a lengthy time, it is really just predicted that you can at some point operate out of place and have to clean things up from time to time. Google has designed it uncomplicated to cleanse your mobile phone up for a number of yrs now with the Files Go application, and big OS updates like Android 12 have designed-in smart storage that is built to instantly totally free up space when it tends to make feeling. So think about my shock when I observed out a concealed system app that won’t be able to be cleaned up was taking up almost 20GB of my phone’s precious storage room.

That method app in question is “Cellular phone and Messaging Storage” an innocuously named app that, primarily based on my encounter with trying to trim up its size, will not do precisely what you imagine it does. I’ve been using this Pixel 4 XL for the previous year-and-a-50 percent — a cellphone that does not assist storage enlargement with the best microSD cards, intellect you — and no volume of operating process updates feel to have solved this problem for me.

I fundamentally disregarded the challenge for months, as I would just continuously run the cleanse-up utility as a result of the Documents Go application and that would cost-free up plenty of room to preserve it from whining at me for various days. Inevitably, even though, it grew to become also much to deal with and it ended up ballooning to the place where by I could no for a longer period set up new apps on the cellphone. This is when I started to dive a little bit further to figure out the difficulty.

Historical origins

Up right until about two weeks back, I basically could not obtain exactly where my storage had absent. It was as if approximately 20GB of storage had just up and disappeared just one working day till it dawned on me to check technique applications. Guaranteed adequate, appropriate at the best of the record was the Cellphone and Messaging Storage application a technique app I failed to notice even existed beforehand but was now the middle of my attention.

Like most program apps, Cellular phone and Messaging Storage are not able to be removed or altered by a normal user. To do that, you’d have to have to root the cellphone and go by a number of diverse techniques making use of a utility like Titanium Backup, or regardless of what it is the kids use these times. As it stands, I have not rooted or ROMed a cell phone in in all probability 50 percent a ten years, and I wasn’t about to start out carrying out it now.

Just as you could possibly do oneself, I sought out assist with a easy Google look for. I figured I experienced a at the time-off trouble on my arms that I would hardly ever be capable to take care of, but the results of the research informed me that this bug has been close to considering the fact that at minimum 2016, even though I could not find any consumer reviews of a file measurement fairly to the stage I was experiencing.

This is a issue that is been around since at the very least 2016 and seemingly has no deal with.

The journey I embarked on incorporated clearing out the regular temporary file storage spots, emptying cache, and heading through all the techniques Google outlines on its Pixel Cell phone Support web site to no cost up storage house — in spite of the point that this dilemma is not only happening on Pixel telephones. These steps amounted to zero, zilch, nadda. I was back to sq. a single and emotion at least a minor bit determined by this issue.

Nuke it

As one particular gentleman and scholar Steve Jobs the moment place it, I then went “thermonuclear” on my Android phone. Some individuals recommended clearing out all of the mobile phone apps’ facts and rebooting. That failed to work. Others suggested deleting each individual textual content message you experienced ever received an hour-long approach that took many retries, very very long waits amongst MMS team deletions, and even kicked me out of fairly a handful of RCS teams I hadn’t supposed to depart.

Regardless of all this, no development was created on the elusive storage thriller. Immediately after all, if clearing out all of your call logs and messages won’t clear up the Cell phone and Messaging Storage technique application, what in the earth would?

Immediately after all, if clearing out all of your simply call logs and messages would not clear up the Phone and Messaging Storage technique application, what in the world would?

I then went app-by-application and cleared data and cache on essentially anything I could, from system apps to user apps, shelling out considerably additional of my working day than I meant on this kind of a silly dilemma. I followed the last shreds of hope to their finish as I taken off all the Google accounts on my cell phone, rebooted, and slowly additional every little thing back again. Even then, completely almost nothing has been solved and I’m however sitting at 1GB of cost-free house remaining on my cellphone.

At this stage, the only foreseeable remedy I can discover is to manufacturing facility reset the machine.

So I contacted Google, who would most assuredly produce some magic tremendous-magic formula way of resolving this bug that seemingly has no option anyplace on the Internet. Right after a sound 7 days of back again-and-forth correspondence, the most effective solution was to refer me again to the incredibly exact same help doc I joined earlier mentioned. Many thanks for the hard work, at the very least.

At this position, the only foreseeable option I can come across is to manufacturing unit reset the unit. The worst section is that — if forum people are suitable — this likely will never address the concern extended time period. I have now occur throughout various consumers who have explained they done this action only to have the bug creep ideal back again up several weeks down the road.

I am listed here to end my sad tale of woe with as substantially a resolution as I arrived into it with. Definitely and genuinely, I have no strategy how to transfer ahead with fixing this trouble other than carrying a second cell phone close to with me to retail outlet all my games and offline new music. The worst section is that, at the very least centered on my correspondence with them, Google doesn’t seem to know how to take care of it possibly. If they do not, I definitely you should not know who else does.