What is taking up all my storage ?

[jack63ss]

I have an old Alcatel phone, running 5.1.1. It says it has 4.37GB of internal storage, but only has 649mb free. I used file manager to thru the entire internal directory and there is virtually nothing there. Where does Android hide all the system and application files that come on the phone ? Do I have to root the phone to even see that stuff ?
Thanks

 

[MoodyBlues]

I have an old Alcatel phone, running 5.1.1.

Same version my old Moto X 2nd Generation is on--and it still runs great! I still use it occasionally.

It says it has 4.37GB of internal storage, but only has 649mb free. I used file manager to thru the entire internal directory and there is virtually nothing there. Where does Android hide all the system and application files that come on the phone ?

In various places.

Do I have to root the phone to even see that stuff ?

No. But you'd need root in order to do anything to them. And that's a good thing. You definitely should not go mucking about in system files, or you may end up with a pretty little paperweight.

What you can do is, first, clear any and all cache files you can find. An app like Chrome [or any other browser] can gobble up disk space! You can go to System Settings and see what your options are for clearing cache. You may need to go app-by-app to do this, but it's no big deal. Sort your apps by amount of space they're using, and it'll be a snap to clear their caches.

If you're still interested in -seeing- Android's system files, some file managers, such as Solid Explorer will let you. [Please note that I have the paid version.]

If none of this helps, you may need to uninstall apps you can live without...or buy a new device!

 

[Hadron]

If you want a simple overview of your storage use try a little app called DiskUsage.

The OS lives in different partitions from your data. But apps and their data live in an area you can't access with a file explorer (basic security: if your file explorer could access the app and its data so could any other app, which makes malicious behaviour very easy). So how much of your space is taken up with apps and their data, including, as Moody has said, temporary cache files? If you go into the system Settings > Apps you should be able to sort them by size, which will quickly show you which are the big storage users.

 

[MoodyBlues]

But apps and their data live in an area you can't access with a file explorer

/root/system/etc, Moto Z² Force, not rooted. That shot is from Solid Explorer, but some of my other file managers allow system access, too:

 

[Hadron]

On my unrooted pixel some of the important directories there aren't visible (e.g. data), while others tell me I can't view the contents.

 

[MoodyBlues]

On my unrooted pixel some of the important directories there aren't visible (e.g. data), while others tell me I can't view the contents.

Weird.