My Android storage was maxed out until this overlooked Android app unlocked 10GB
No matter which Android smartphone you buy, whether it's the Google Pixel 10 Pro , Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, or the Honor Magic 8 Pro , you'll eventually run out of storage on your phone.
The solutions most people turn to are buying cloud storage, offloading files to an external drive , or buying a phone with more internal storage the next time around.
However, these options are not always practical. I recently found myself in the same situation.
I've owned my Pixel 10 Pro for about six months, and I was close to using 100GB of storage . This was surprising because I haven't installed many apps, and I turned on Google Photos backup.
Curious to see what was eating up space on my phone, I decided to dig deeper.
While doing so, I came across a few underrated Android apps that show which files and apps hog your storage and, more importantly, how to free up space without randomly deleting them.
Disky is the simplest storage analyzer you can install
It quickly shows what is eating space without clutter
One annoying thing about storage analyzer and cleaner apps on Android is their clunky and unintuitive UIs.
For example, my mom has to call me to see what's hogging storage on her Galaxy S24 FE. Most of these apps aren't user-friendly (and are usually filled with ads and other phishy things).
While searching for the perfect storage analyzer app, I stumbled upon Disky. It's not available on the Google Play Store and is only available via the F-Droid app store.
The app has an easy-to-use interface that's simple enough for anyone to figure out.
After opening Disky, it asks for several permissions, such as access to manage all files and app usage data, which these apps require, along with other permissions like notifications.
On the first run, it analyzes the storage on your phone almost immediately.
After it's done, Disky presents a simple UI. It shows what's using the most storage on your phone.
At the top, the app displays a pie chart showing used storage and available free space. Below that, it lists items in descending order based on the amount of storage they use.
You can change the order to view everything alphabetically, but it defaults to sorting by size. You can also refresh the analysis at any time by tapping the refresh buttonin the top bar.
For me, the biggest storage hog on my Pixel 10 Pro was apps, which took up nearly 45GB of space. Even with Google Photos backup turned on, the DCIM folder occupied about 17.5GB, while Downloads accounted for roughly 11.5 GB.
You can drill down into subfolders to see what's taking up the most storage in each section. The downside is that you can't delete files from this app.
You'll need to use other file manager apps to remove the data, since Disky only shows what is using storage space.
disky - Find your biggest diskspace thieves! | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
Price: Free
1969-12-31
F-Droid
There's another app worth mentioning
It gives a different view if you want slightly more detail
If you find Disky too minimal or not particularly useful, there's another app worth checking out called SD Maid 2/SE.
Unlike Disky, SD Maid 2/SE can help you clean internal storage and cache files, and it lets you dig much deeper.
The app offers a clean interface with a delete button at the bottom that helps you free up space with a single tap. The bottom bar also shows how much space can be freed up instantly.
In terms of features, SD Maid 2/SE offers several tools, including CorpseFinder, which lets you find and delete leftover files and directories from uninstalled apps.
Similarly, the SystemCleaner feature helps remove junk files, while the Deduplicator tool helps you remove duplicate files on your phone.
Similar to Disky, you can see which apps and files take up the most storage on your phone through the StorageAnalyzer feature. Unlike Disky, this app takes you to the app settings, where you can clear cache files and user data.
The main downside of SD Maid 2/SE is that most of its features, including the Scheduler that can automatically run tools like the app cleaner, are locked behind a paid subscription.
If you only want to see what's taking up space and manually free up storage, I found Disky to be the better option.
TOOLS
Price: Free
4.1
Cleaning your Android phone's storage is not that difficult
Freeing up your phone's storage isn't as hard as it should be. If you own a Samsung Galaxy smartphone, there are plenty of tricks to free up space on your phone.
