I noticed that my Pixel 9 was using 91 GB out of its 128 GB total. That’s a little over 70%, so I figured I’d dive in and figure out what I could delete, without having to do the time-honored “delete all my photos” dance that we’ve been using since phones had cameras.

Sometimes, you’ll get a “storage almost full” warning when you’re about to shoot a video, download a system update, or even install a new app. It can be frustrating. It’s generally not your photos, though: it’s all that hidden junk. Here are a few targeted steps to use on your own Pixel (you can do similar things on most other flavors of Android, too) without touching a single precious memory.

Check what’s actually eating your storage

A little detective work

First up, head into Settings > Storage to see the biggest offenders. Check out the breakdown by category, and be sure to scroll to the bottom, where the System files are to make sure those aren’t swollen with use. My Pixel had a bunch of big games on it, so I knew that was going to be one of the first places to start. Since my Pixel 9 isn’t my daily driver, it doesn’t have a lot of other things on it, like Images or Audio. Still, it’s good to know what impacts your storage the most before you tackle your storage problems.

Use Clean and Files by Google to nuke big, unused files

The meat and potatoes of the process

Next, you can use Google’s Files app to clean up your storage. You can either use the green button in the main Storage screen from above or launch the app from your Home screen. The green button takes you to the Clean app and groups similar files to delete, such as duplicates, old screenshots, or unused apps. Tap through to the specific file type, tap the files you want to delete, then tap Move all files to Trash.

If you go the Files route, you can look for the biggest storage hitters (mine was in Apps). You can also filter by Large apps, Unused apps, or Games. The largest apps on my phone were all three – large unused games. If you’re in the Files menu proper, tap the three dot menu to the right of the app you want to delete, and hit Uninstall.

I had 3.14 GB of large files, and 39.42 GB of Unused apps (these were my games). I nuked these and reclaimed all that space.

Clear app and Google Play caches

Pay attention to social media and browser caches

Head into Settings and find the Apps section. Tap there and then find the app you’re looking for. Start with apps like Chrome, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, or YouTube. Then you can go to Storage & cache > Clear cache. Since my Pixel isn’t my daily phone, i didn’t see a lot to reclaim: just .5 GB on Chrome and Instagram, and a paltry 145 MB from YouTube. I still cleaned it out, for sure, but your experience may differ, depending on how much you use those apps.

Clearing the Google Play Services cache is often overlooked, but it can be a good source of space savings. Simply head to Settings > Apps > See all apps > Google Play Services > Storage > Clear cache (not storage), and you can likely get back up to 2 GB. My cache came in at 1.3 GB, so I deleted it. Purge your Downloads folder

Obvious but essential

This might seem like a no-brainer, but we download a ton of stuff every day and then forget about it. Files like APKs, PDFs, and one-time attachments can live here, and it’s a good thing to check in on. If you don’t need it, get rid of it. My Pixel 9 doesn’t have a ton of downloads, so I saw no savings here, but my iPhone 15 Pro Max sure has a lot. I’m cleaning that out next.

Free up space from Google Photos (without deleting photos)

No need to lose precious memories

Here’s an easy way to go: Open Google Photos, tap on your Profile Icon, then tap Free up space on this device. This will remove local copies of the photos you already have backed up to the cloud. Your photos still exist (you haven’t actually gotten rid of them), but the duplicated images from your device are now gone. You’ll want to make sure that they’re all backed up, of course, and you can check the backup status at the top of the Photos app. If you’re a heavy shooter, this could be your biggest win. For me, I only saved 3.17 GB, but even that was worth it.

Bonus step for the heavy file sharers

WhatsApp, Telegram, and Google Messages all cache media locally (on all platforms). For WhatsApp, you can hit Settings > Storage and data > Manage storage and then sort by size, bulk deleting old group media files. With Telegram, head into Settings > Data and Storage > Storage Usage and then set media to auto-delete after 3 days.

Google Messages does it a bit differently. Head into Settings > Apps > See all apps > Messages > Storage & cache > Clear cache to take care of it.

You could possibly reclaim up to 4 GB if you’re an active group chatter. I only found 69.28 MB in Google Messages, which is the only messaging service I use on my Pixel.

OS

Android

Developer

WhatsApp LLC

WhatsApp keeps your files and messages locally on your phone. This can quietly eat up gigabytes of space over time, which makes this a good one to check.

The final countdown

Once I ran through all of the above, I ended up cleaning out 35 GB of space, which brings me to 44% usage. Now I have more room for new games that I might play, plenty more videos and photos, and can grab Messages attachments with aplomb. I’ll likely do this quarterly to make sure I’m never overloading my storage, which can slow things down on your phone.