What is ‘Others’ in Samsung Storage – It’s not unusual when your Samsung phone runs out of storage. And when it happens, just like the others, you most probably go to the storage section to see what types of data are mostly eating your space. The Samsung storage option shows how much storage is consumed by what types of data. You will see several file categories there like- video, audio, image, and others.
A question may arise to your mind after seeing this, what do these “others” mean? What kind of data falls under the other category anyway?
Well, to answer your question, we are going to discuss the other file category in detail. Furthermore, you will learn how to get rid of these files safely from your phone. Let’s begin.
Table of Contents
Others in Samsung phone’s storage
As we have told you, the storage section actually shows data categories and the amount of data each category has consumed. But the other category actually looks very confusing since it’s not clear on its name what data it holds. That’s why we see numerous forum posts asking about what is other in storage.
The other category actually contains unspecified files, mostly cache files. Caches are some data files that come from different applications you use on your phone. For example- Chrome, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok, etc.
These apps preserve some thumbnails, images, conversation records, browsing history, etc on your phone so that they don’t need to download these files every time. As a result, these apps will load quickly on your phone, giving you a smooth experience.
Although these cached files are meant to bring a positive effect on your experience, sometimes outdated and unnecessary cached files eat up a lot of storage. But don’t lose hope, there are ways to delete them.
How to delete other files from Samsung storage?
Cached files are shown as other files on your phone. It is quite common that these other files eat up huge unnecessary storage from your phone. Especially when cached files get corrupted, the app will simply ignore them and generate new cached files. That’s why when you get a storage run-out issue, you can get a lot of storage back by deleting others files. There are several ways to do that. Let’s discuss them.
Manually clearing the app cache
This is a very safe and easy way to remove cached files that fall into the others category in storage. Most of the apps store caches to load faster without every time downloading certain data like pictures, thumbnails, etc. Each app has its cached differently stored. To manually delete them, follow the steps:
- On your Samsung phone, go to settings, and then to applications.
- Here will see the list of installed applications on your phone. Select an app by clicking on its name.
- Then choose storage.
- Here will find a button called “clear cache”. just click on it. and you are done.
Removing junk files using Google Files app
If you have the Google Filles app installed on your phone, then you can use its special feature to remove junk files from your storage to free up some space. Clearing up these junk files will also reduce the other files in Samsung storage.
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If your phone doesn’t have this app, you can simply install it from the play store. Now follow the steps below:
- Open the Files by Google app.
- Select the “Clean” option from the bottom left corner.
- Wait for a few seconds and you will see the “Junk Files” card appear.
- Click on the “Confirm and free up” option.
- On the next page, click on the “Clean” button. Wait for a while until it’s finished and all of the junk files will be removed.
Clearing app data
If you clear all data of an app, it goes back to its initial state, which means the state when it was after you installed it. Clearing data of an app will also reduce some files from others. Let’s see how to clear app data on your Samsung phone.
- Go to settings and then to Applications.
- Select an app, e.g. Chrome.
- Go to storage and click on the “Clear Data’ option and then press OK.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it safe to delete all the other files in the storage?
Yes, it is safe to delete most of the other files. Because other files mostly contain cache from different apps and are non-essential data. So, deleting them from your phone will not harm your phone. Although after deleting, the apps will generate cache files again when you use them, it often helps free up some storage space. And in some cases, it even improves the phone’s performance.
Should I regularly clear cached files?
You can clear the cached files from your phone often. Regularly clearing files is not technically wrong, but there are consequences. For example, the Messenger app stores conversations and image cached files. If you delete them, it will store them again when you open them. But when storing it for the second time, it will cost your internet data to download those again. The same goes for every other app. Therefore, if you find yourself regularly clearing caches, then you should delete something else to clear up your storage.
Conclusion
All the unspecified and unknown files are displayed as Other files. So, if you have downloaded any large files with no specific extension, find them in the file manager and delete them. If after performing all the actions above, you still find your phone is out of storage space, then you have to delete some files or uninstall apps from your Samsung phone’s storage.