• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Help "Insufficient Storage" when trying to install any apps.

cppietime

cppietime

Lurker
I have an LG Lucid 2 and I've found myself COMPLETELY unable to install ANY apps, even though I have about 2.19 GB of free space on my phone(and by phone I mean on my phone, NOT on my SD card). Whenever I try to install an app from the Google Play Store, the blue download bar fills up as usual until it is completely full, then it displays the text "installing..." for a second or two, until the alert comes up claiming that the phone has "Insufficient Storage Available." This is very strange, because I'd think 2.19 GB of data is more than sufficient storage for a 6 MB application.

To clarify, while I don't know how the data is partitioned, and therefore don't know how much of those 2 GB are usable for installing apps, I have deleted several apps from my phone, and their combined sizes greatly exceeds the size of any apps I try to install. I've tried clearing cache and clearing data, again, the data alone from clearing caches amounts to more than the app's supposed size, but I still get the error.

What can I do to fix this? Is my phone just completely unable to install new apps now?
 
Storage Truth will answer your questions about your partitions for app storage, cases like yours are exactly why we made it -

http://androidforums.com/threads/qu...e-is-your-storage-truth-read-me-first.906249/

But in your present state, you may not be able to install it even though it's really small. But try it first.

The Play Store has an occasional bug where it doesn't clean up its temporary files from the /cache partition.

Depending on your phone model, you may be able to boot into your bootloader and clear cache from your stock recovery.

Your other option is to enable usb debugging, plug your phone into your pc and try to talk to it with adb that you can get here -

http://androidforums.com/threads/adb-guide-updated-2014-11-11.443072/#post-5389081

Unzip the sdk-tools.zip folder, open Windows Explorer, shift + right click on the sdk-tools folder and choose to open a command prompt (or window) here.

Then to see your storage layout and use just say in the command window -

adb shell df

The linked thread will try to help with adb drivers if you need them.

Your apps from the Play Store need to go into /data/apps so the /data space is key.

Our Mini-SDK also has Mac and Linux instructions if you're not on Windows.

Hope this helps!
 
As you know, you are out of space to install apps on your device. Apps are not installed in the memory as you think they are.

Install this simple app. It's very small and will install in very limited space. It will tell you where apps are installed and how much space you actually have left for installing apps:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sa.storagetruth

To make space you can:
Delete some texts or emails. If you really have lots, this can help.
Uninstall app updates.
Uninstall apps.
Clear caches, but that will only make space temporarily. Cache files will rebuild over time. Also, while clearing cache files won't hurt anything, they're there to speed up operation and should be left alone.

Edit: Ninj'd by EM again!
 
nickdalzell said:
there are many ways to work around Play Store's stupid app installer which will give the 'insufficient storage available' notice if the space drops below the pre-defined threshold built into Android (less than 20% of total internal storage). simply downloading the APK file from another source and copying it into /system/app and rebooting works too.

there is an SQLite hack though that disables the sync-killing 'low space' alert in the notification bar though, this can eke out a few more apps from Play before it once again rears its ugly head.
Click to expand...
I don't see a /system/app folder on my phone. By which I mean when I plugged it into my PC and searched the files I didn't see an app folder, nor did I see a system folder in which it might be contained. Anyway, I tried to copy the .apk to the SD card then install it from there, but I still got an error reporting that the app could not be installed because my device was "Out of Space". Did I mention that my device's free memory(the device's, NOT the SD card) is roughly 340x the size of the app?
 
EarlyMon said:
Storage Truth will answer your questions about your partitions for app storage, cases like yours are exactly why we made it -
Click to expand...
Hmm... even with that tiny, .5 MB app, I can't install it, as I get the same "Insufficient Storage" error. Yep, even on tiny 544 KB apps I get the error, even though I've already uninstalled several apps, each of which were several MB in size. It just doesn't make any sense. As for adb, I already have it(I've made a few Android apps), I haven't tried it yet, but I have a feeling it's just some sort of glitch, not an actual lack of memory, which I of course have no idea how to fix.
As for clearing system data for the Play Store, which I've heard some people suggest on other threads, I've already tried it; didn't work.

EDIT: I tried using adb, but I'm not entirely sure what I need to do. I see that my 'data' folder has 2.24 free GB, so... what now? Also, I've tried copying a .apk to the SD card in the phone, and then installing it using File Manager, but I still get an Out of Space error.
 
EarlyMon said:
The Play Store has an occasional bug where it doesn't clean up its temporary files from the /cache partition.

Depending on your phone model, you may be able to boot into your bootloader and clear cache from your stock recovery.
Click to expand...
http://www.mobiany.com/how-to-wipe-the-cache-partition-on-lg-lucid-2.html

Reboot phone when done, go to settings, Apps, All, find Download or Download manager or whatever LG similarly calls it on your phone and clear cache and data there.

See if that changes it.
 
cppietime said:
I don't see a /system/app folder on my phone. By which I mean when I plugged it into my PC and searched the files I didn't see an app folder, nor did I see a system folder in which it might be contained. Anyway, I tried to copy the .apk to the SD card then install it from there, but I still got an error reporting that the app could not be installed because my device was "Out of Space". Did I mention that my device's free memory(the device's, NOT the SD card) is roughly 340x the size of the app?
Click to expand...
Moved that over here so everyone can have one conversation in one place without confusion.

I take it from your earlier comment about adb that you ran the adb shell df command.

You're not going to see /system or /data or any other reserved partition from a Windows Explorer and you're not going to see it in any case unless you're rooted.

Your problem is not going to be fixed by sideloading from the sd card.

If it could have been, one of us would have been nice enough to say that.
 
EarlyMon said:
http://www.mobiany.com/how-to-wipe-the-cache-partition-on-lg-lucid-2.html

Reboot phone when done, go to settings, Apps, All, find Download or Download manager or whatever LG similarly calls it on your phone and clear cache and data there.

See if that changes it.
Click to expand...
I followed the instructions on that page, but I ended up on what appears to be "Download Mode"(on which I can do absolutely nothing), rather than any sort of System Recovery Mode.

EDIT: I also tried another method involving only the volume down button, but this doesn't seem to do anything.
 
Last edited:
EarlyMon said:
Reboot phone when done, go to settings, Apps, All, find Download or Download manager or whatever LG similarly calls it on your phone and clear cache and data there.
Click to expand...
Either way, don't forget that part.

You *may* be able to sideload from your pc -

adb sideload name-of-file.apk

But even if it works, it's a band aid.
 
EarlyMon said:
From the normally running phone try -

adb reboot recovery
Click to expand...
Uhmmm... well I saw the green android w/a blue bar and spinning icosohedron for a minute, then the phone rebooted, asked for a language(I selected English, which was already selected), and told me the SIM card was already activated and told me what my phone number was. It then went through the usual procedure for setting up a phone the first time you use it. The phone then started up and appears to have essentially undergone a complete hard reset. All old apps are gone as well as media not on the SD card.

Anyway, I was able to install the app at least, see you, space cowboy.
 
:(

I totally apologize.

Either it's something weird with the LG that I didn't know about (that would be my guess) or something was really tangled under the hood, maybe a piece leftover from a previous update.

As you can guess, adb reboot recovery ought to have done nothing more than what the words imply.

Glad it's fixed, sorry about the hard reset.
 
I've been there too. Glad that you've brought this up. It's nice to always go back to something that you can reference if in case it start acting weird or strange again. It was a pain not being able to install any apps at all even with the storage availability and so I feel you.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom