Phone is showing storage full when it's not

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Android Central Question

Last night I got a warning on my phone that the storage is full and functions may no longer work. When I looked at storage details it showed me that 70GB of storage is taken up by apps. There are 77 apps on my phone, meaning they'd have to average nearly a gigabyte each to take up this much space, and there's only one that comes anywhere close. Looking deeper, I see that "Media Storage" shows as an app taking up just over 60GB - equivalent to the actual media that's on the device. It looks like this is being counted twice (as media and as an app) causing the phone to think it's full when it's not.
Phone details:
Model: One Plus 9
Android Version: Android 11
Build Number: Oxygen OS 11.2.8.8.LE5AA
Kernel Version: 5.4.61-qgki-g3cfe691
Android Security Update: 2021-07-01
 

SpookDroid

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App file sizes aren't the only thing that makes up an app, though. Temporary downloads, media files (for games, for instance... those don't show as 'media' on your phone, but aren't part of the game install size), etc. OS also takes up space.
 

Plics1998

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App file sizes aren't the only thing that makes up an app, though. Temporary downloads, media files (for games, for instance... those don't show as 'media' on your phone, but aren't part of the game install size), etc. OS also takes up space.

I'm accounting for all of those things.
When I look at the space used by a given app, it shows me App size, User data, and Cache. One of the system apps is "Media Storage" and the User data for that app is all the media I have stored (the number exactly matches and changes if I add or remove media). The OS is counting the size of that app (all three parts as I've just described) and is also counting stored media towards the total used storage on the device.
 

Javier P

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I'm accounting for all of those things.
When I look at the space used by a given app, it shows me App size, User data, and Cache. One of the system apps is "Media Storage" and the User data for that app is all the media I have stored (the number exactly matches and changes if I add or remove media). The OS is counting the size of that app (all three parts as I've just described) and is also counting stored media towards the total used storage on the device.
Welcome to the forums. Clear the trash in the Gallery app and see if it makes a difference. It can be found at the bottom of the Collections tab.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ArtemR/status/1429172474894176256
 

Plics1998

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Phone is 128GB.

Storage breakdown shows 68 GB of apps.
When I click on that, set it to show system apps, I find a total of 7.3 GB of apps + 60.78 GB of "Media Storage". I've seen it stated elsewhere that "Media Storage" is a purely virtual number and doesn't actually occupy space, but here I see it included in the total storage used by apps.
I also see 2.7 GB of photos, 57 GB of music, and .9 GB of files for a total of 60.6 GB. I assume there's some rounding error that accounts for the other .18 GB.
That means that Media Storage is being counted twice and showing my device as full when it is not.
 

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