Why internal storage space on my Samsung Galaxy J7 2015 doesn't add up?

[Muhallil Ahnaf Tanna]

Scanned internal storage with Samsung Smart Manager and 'Drives' app, shows that out of 16 GB, 4GB is system memory, 8GB is used and 4GB free. But while looking up at the internal storage I found that 2.8 GB is app data, 1.16 GB is photos/other media, and 1GB cache. So it leaves about 3GB which going to settings>storage identifies as 'others'. But I don't have any other files except those app data and media files, so what exactly is consuming this 3GB space?

 

[Rukbat]

A lot of apps and data aren't visible to you, so adding up the things that you see using space isn't adding up all the things that use space. ('Others' is the stuff you can't see.)

Clear the cache, that's stuff you don't need. (Apps store data there when they're running, but they're supposed to clear it out when you close them. [Of course if you just hit the Home button to stop using an app, it will never clear its cache - you should be using the Back button to stop running an app. And some apps still won't clear their cache that way - you'll still have to do it manually once in a while.])

 

[Muhallil Ahnaf Tanna]

Thanks a lot Rukbat for the nice explanation.