Why do apps take up more internal storage than they should?

[AC Question]

I have a Sony Xperia Z5 running Android 6.0.1 with 32GB of internal storage as well as a 30GB SD card, both of which I wanted so that I would never have to worry about storage space on my phone. Recently, however, I got the notification that internal storage was almost full (all files that could be transferred to the SD Card already were).

When I checked to see what was taking up so much space, the Internal Storage summary said that Apps were taking up a whopping 19.14GB of memory! The problem is that when I checked to see which apps were big so that I could uninstall them, the only app greater than 400MB was my music app at 1.6GB. When I added up all the app sizes, all the way down to the ones that were less than 50MB, I found that they should sum to only about 6GB. Does anyone know how this 13GB discrepancy could have come about, and if there's any way I can solve it?
Thanks in advance!

 

[nahoku]

Might be a Google PlayServices issue again. Sorry, can't remember exactly which Google app it was but search the forum for something like "Google Play Services using up memory", or something like that... there are a lot of hits. If it's not Google, then install Diskusage to see if it can find out where storage is being used.

 

[birdistherword]

@nahoku I had to make an account to reply, but thanks for the advice!

I checked Google Play services, it was taking up about 350MB, not insignificant but I don't think its the cause of my 13GB problem. However, I tried Diskusage and while it was a little hard to understand, I think it shows that I should have 21GB of free space? That sounds accurate to what it should be, but I literally had to delete an app to make room in order to download Diskusage. I've attached a screenshot of what Diskusage showed me, as well as what my Internal Storage is showing (after I deleted the 3.7GB Hearthstone app to make room for Diskusage). Does this mean that there's a discrepancy between how much storage my phone thinks it has and how much it actually has?

 

[nahoku]

I would tend to believe what the phone reports. Then again, if you look at diskusage, it's reporting a lot of storage use. If you add all of what it shows it comes to about 17.5gb. Add that to what the OS (9.42gb) is taking up and that adds up to 26 - 27gb... close to what your phone storage is.

If you click on each tab on diskusage, it will break it down to let you see what app is taking the most storage. You have to look at each tab... Android, Sony, backup, etc.

A lot of social apps will store stuff on your phone without you knowing about it, so I would start looking at your Application manager to see if you can find the offending apps. Stuff like Facebook, instagram, whatsapp, snapchat, etc. If you use any of these, go to these apps in Application manager and see how much data they're storing. None should store excessive amounts of data. Don't forget to check all the Google apps... including Maps, and any heavy games you play.

Note that I don't use social media, but I've read many posts here that have involved those apps I've mentioned storing excessive data, including Google apps.

 

[birdistherword]

Thanks again for the response.

Perhaps I'm misinterpreting it but I thought that each block on Diskusage already contains everything to its right, so the total used storage should only be the DCIM+Android+Music+System, as well as the couple very small blocks in between? Then it shows the 21GB of Free Space to sum up to the 30GB of storage in total.

As far as the Application Manager goes, that's what I meant in my original post when I said I looked at each individual app size-the application manager said that apps were using 19GB total, but when I went in to the manager to check for the offending apps there were none that were very large at all, Facebook and Snapchat were on the high end but only about 300-400MB each. This prompted me to manually add up the size of each app, and I only got to about 6GB, which seems more in line with what DiskUsage is showing, yet I still have to delete apps to make room to download new ones.

Once again I really appreciate the help!

 

[nahoku]

My apologies, you're right... each block does reflect everything to the right. Haven't used the app in such a long time I forgot how it worked! Sorry about that!

I'm not exactly sure what might be going on with your memory. If you say nothing is obvious in the App Manager, then the only thing I can think of is cache somewhere. Have you tried starting your phone in recovery and wiping the cache partition?

Gotta confirm this... have you checked "every" Google app to see if any are storing large amounts of data. There were quite a few threads here not long ago on several Google apps storing like 13 - 21gbs of data for no good reason.

Sorry, not being of much help here!

 

[birdistherword]

Okay so I've figured out what the problem was, I figured I'd post again here in case anyone stumbles across this forum in the future with a similar problem. The issue was my backups. Since I'd had my phone I had it set to back up weekly (maybe excessive but I'd had issues with lost data in the past) and I suppose that while I thought it would only back up what was new for every week, it was actually making an entirely new copy every week for a year an a half. This came out to about 12GB of internal storage being taken up (lol). It didn't show up under the "apps" section of internal storage because on the Xperia you had to select the "show system" option from the drop down menu, therefore displaying system apps as well as downloaded ones. Voila, I found where 50% of my storage had disappeared to, deleted it, and now I have my memory back again . Thanks to everyone who assisted me with this problem!

 

[Sam Lloyd]

hi...similar issue I think...

some reason I feel like it could be something to do with oculus VR installed. I have moved over every app I could to sd card but still the maths don't seem to add up with the 6gb my apps are using compared to what it says they are in total...

 

[frankli2]

AC Question please tell me how u make in your android. i have a same problem . tell me how to delete backup apps. my apps shows 17GB storage. but it sholud be 3,4 GB when i sum up . i have a same issue like u. plz tell me how to delete that data.

 

[abdul nazer]

I also had the same problem. When I checked the memory statistics in device settings, I could identify the Chrome browser as the prime culprit which itself comumed 18 G , more than the half of my internal storage.

Solution:
From Apps > Chrome, I turned the sync ON and then deleted the app data.

I got the free space as well the phone performance back