Mysterious Data Usage
When you’re trying to take a video or download a new app, and your phone tells you it can’t do this because the data has been used up, it’s a frustrating experience. Fine, you think to yourself, you’ll just go delete something you don’t use as often or photos you’ve already backed up elsewhere. But when you try to investigate the breakdown of your documents and apps, you find something strange: the cumulative data you seem to be using doesn’t actually exceed the amount of data you have on your phone. In fact, it’s far below what you were told your limits were. So what gives?

Read More: How to Clean up and Speed up Your Android Phone

The Issue with Ghost Data
Ghost data is the culprit, and, aptly named, it’s data that’s there while appearing invisible. How do you pick up ghost data? Lots of ways, actually. Partitioning your memory for different apps and photos, for example, takes up a large amount of data (because each new partition needs to be labeled). It isn’t something your phone clumps with the actual data of the file or app. There are various other culprits, too, such as temporary files, log files, caches, leftover data from uninstalled apps, and core dumps. They can all add up to be a lot of data that isn’t specifically tethered to a particular file, and so it will not appear anywhere, much like a ghost.

How to Get Rid of Ghost Data
That’s a little trickier. You’ll essentially have to root your phone and then track down individual files to ensure they are files that will be safe to delete. It can be a bit of a process, but depending on the amount of ghost data you’ve accumulated, you may be surprised by how much room you end up freeing up. Of course, if you don’t have to time to do the manual work, or if you don’t feel comfortable rooting your phone, the quick cleanup feature is a great start.

Read More: How to Clear WhatsApp Files on an Android

Step 2: Remove Apps You Don’t Use

If you like to follow app trends and test out the latest apps, odds are, you’ll stop using these apps after a while. If you have old social networking apps, ridesharing apps, games, photo-editing apps, and more that you no longer use, then it’s time to delete them from your phone. If you change your mind and want to redownload an old app that you paid for, you won’t have to pay for the app again; all of your apps are saved to your account. Click here to use App Manager to quickly evaluate the apps on your phone and delete any that you no longer want:

Before removing any files, make sure that any photos, podcasts, music files, or videos that you want to keep are backed up to another location. You may want to backup these files to your PC, laptop, or an external hard drive. Now, evaluate the media files on your device: are you actually using all of these files? Photos, videos, and music can take up a lot of space on your device. Choose a select number of these files to keep on your device — if you regularly use them — and delete the rest. You don’t really need to keep HD photos from your recent trip abroad, videos of your friends goofing off, or half of your music library on your phone. If you still want access to these files, though, store them in the cloud.

Read More: How Much Memory Do You Need on Your Phone?

Facebook

Yes, the social media giant takes up a lot of space on your phone, topping the list of some rankings as the biggest space suck of all. At a minimum, Facebook takes up 200MB of storage. Facebook Messenger is in its own category; the messenger, which isn’t a part of the Facebook app, also takes up a significant number of MBs.

Spotify

Perhaps it isn’t surprising that a music streaming service top the lists of the biggest storage hogs on Android. With such an extensive catalog, Spotify’s cache can take up more and more space on your device, with some users reporting that it takes up nearly 2GB of internal memory on their Androids.

Instagram

Like Spotify, the photo-sharing social media channel caches files, which is one of the reasons that the app might take up more room on your phone. Even though the more you use Instagram, the more photos will be stored, you’re in luck: the app’s cache resets weekly so it won’t become completely unmanageable.

Snapchat

Snapchat isn’t such a big offender when you first download it, clocking in at around 3MB to download. However, like the other apps, it starts growing and growing the more you use the app. As your cache accumulates, you might find that Snapchat uses 10MB or more of your storage space.

If any of your favorite apps are on this list, you might be better off getting rid of them using App Manager. A fast phone with sufficient storage space is often worth more than even the most popular app.

Remove Unnecessary Files

One way to quickly free up space on your device is to remove old, unwanted files — files that you may not realize your device is storing. Use DFNDR’s Quick Cleanup feature to remove junk files, temporary files, trash, and cache from your device and SD card. Performing this task will free up your phone’s internal memory, which will allow your phone to perform more smoothly. Click here to quickly clean up your device by removing junk files:

Remove Duplicate Photos

If you take and store a lot of photos on your device, then it’s time to organize your photos — and remove some. Make sure to regularly back up all of your photos to the cloud or a computer, to ensure that you never lose a photo if your phone becomes lost, stolen, or damaged.

Next, you’ll want to go through all of the photos on your phone to check for repeat photos. Duplicate photos can take up a lot of unnecessary space that could be used for apps or photos that you actually want on your device. Use DFNDR’s Duplicate Photos feature to quickly scan your phone for repeated photos so that you can remove them. That way, you won’t have to spend a lot of time searching through your device for unwanted photos. Click here to remove duplicate photos from your device and free up space:

If you download a lot of apps but rarely uninstall any, then it’s time you take a look at which apps you really use. If you haven’t used an app in a few months (or longer), consider deleting it to free up space on your device. If you end up needing the app, you can always redownload it. This goes for music or videos that you store on your device, too. Media files can take up a lot of space. If you’re not using them, then it’s best to let something else take up that space. At the very least, move them to your SD card.

Amazon Photos
With this app, you’ll have unlimited space to store your photos. This app also offers a feature that lets you automatically sync your photos to your Amazon Cloud drive. The app works really well unless you try and download a larger image, at which time the Cloud drive will automatically make the picture smaller. Although, most phone cameras capture smaller images, some Android cameras can capture large megapixel pictures, so this might not be the app for you. If you’re an Amazon Prime member, the Cloud Drive Photos is free to use. If you’re not, you can buy the app and cloud storage for $11.99 per year.

Read More: Enjoy 3D Constellations with Star Chart for Android

Google Photos
Google Photos is an editing app that helps you store and sort your photos on cloud storage. Although the app is already the default photo editing app on most Android phones, it’s also a good app to store and edit your photos. In addition to offering cloud sorting and automatic sync, the free Google Photos app lets you work with automatic editing features and search your photos using an image analysis.

Uploadr
The mobile app paired with the popular photo sharing community Flickr works so well because you can set it to automatically upload your photos in bulk. Flickr gives you tons of free cloud storage, too — 1TB to be exact, which stores more than 300,000 average-sized photos. To scroll through and share your photos, Flickr has the technology down pat. While the phone uploader is free, you’ll have to pay $5.99 per month to use the uploader for desktops. One problem with Flickr, however, is that it won’t accept RAW files. Plus, Yahoo doesn’t always provide excellent customer service to Flickr users.

Want to make sure you’re using your phone’s memory to its utmost efficiency? Download PSafe Total. PSafe’s Memory Booster feature clears out unneeded clutter from your phone’s memory and storage. With PSafe, you can also optimize your data usage, which also speeds up your phone.