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Help Misc files overloading phone space

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ShrewdSimian

Lurker
My phone is overloaded with mystery files that Android only labels as "misc". I've tried removing all my media from my phone and putting it on an SD card and then running a cleaner app, but the "misc" files still occupy a huge 9 GB of space.

How do I get rid of them?
 
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Do you have any large games installed? Like from EA, Glu or Gameloft, some of which can be several gigabytes. These often download additional play data in order to work, and that does show as misc, which might be in the /obb directory. If it's this data, don't delete otherwise the associated games and apps may not work.
 
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Sometimes backup services create large files.

What directory are these misc files In?

I don't know of it's relevant if you think you already found the offending files, but an app named Diskusage gives a graphical way of exploring your storage which can help identify what's taking space. If you keep moving to the right in this app, additional details appear a you look at the smaller chunks. This might reveal something about your misc files.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.diskusage
 
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Can't install any additional apps. I have 684mb of free space left but Google Play always says I don't have enough room to install anything no matter what it is. Can't even install the latest update to Google Photos that would allow me to backup all my photos.

As far as games, I only have Tetris and Cut the Rope installed.

When I checked the disk usage in Settings, I found that 6.28 GB of space in "misc" is actually "system memory".
 
I have 684mb of free space left but Google Play always says I don't have enough room to install anything no matter what it is
Click to expand...
Some phones segregate "app memory" (includes apps plus their data) from other free memory which is available for user data (like my htc one vx... shows up that way in settings/storage). Some of your games may have a lot of data filling up app memory. When you fill up app memory you are stuck unless you can find a way to trim it back. I'd sort apps by size and look at which of the biggest ones you might be able to move to sd or live without. btw what phone do you have?
 
Yeah, those two games don't take up much more than 2-4 mb of memory since they are rarely played and they are tiny anyway.

The biggest app hog is Go SMS Pro at 600mb. However, clearing it's memory would mean losing all my SMS history.

Even if I did, doesn't explain why I can't install any apps even with free space.

Galaxy S4.
 
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