why is google play services using so much internal memory every day?

[AC Question]

My phone has 2.4GB free of internal memory at this moment. However, by this time tomorrow, it will be down to 350MB of free space due to google play services app data. Every day I have to clear it's data, which gets really annoying. This started about a week ago. I can't figure out what's going on. I thought at first it was play music caching data but that's turned off. All of my google play apps are set to not cache or download anything. I can't, for the life of me figure out what's going on. None of my friends phones are doing this. I want to avoid a factory reset if possible. My phone is not rooted & I don't want to root it. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Which phone? Just to be clear--you're talking about internal storage, and not RAM, right?

 

[lgusr]

@B. Diddy - I didn't really want to create an account on this site but I quickly realized I couldn't reply unless I did. In response to your question, my phone is an LG F60 from MetroPCS & yes, I am referring to internal memory, not RAM.

 

[B. Diddy]

Thanks for signing up! It's really the best way to have any kind of useful discussion on this forum.

Is your phone the 4 GB or 8 GB version? If it's the 4 GB version, then this may be the new normal for you. 4 GB phones have only about 1 GB (or less) available to the user, which is where your apps need to be installed and most apps need to use for data storage. Some apps can use the SD card, but not all. I can't tell you specifically what Google Play Services is saving as data, but it may just be that you'll need a phone with more internal storage to avoid this hassle.

You could try disabling all Google apps that you never use, but keep in mind that other non-Google apps may also utilize Google Play Services, so this might not narrow things down.

 

[lgusr]

@B. Diddy - yes, my phone is the 4GB version, however I've never had this problem before. Google play services used to just take up roughly 175MB of internal memory & not grow any further.

I really appreciate the information you were able to provide. I was unaware that 3rd party apps could utilize google play services. If this is the case, I'm pretty sure HBO Go is to blame. That app updated at roughly the same time this started happening.

 

[B. Diddy]

If this is the case, I'm pretty sure HBO Go is to blame. That app updated at roughly the same time this started happening.

That's a very good possibility. See what happens if you temporarily uninstall it.

 

[lgusr]

Well, it wasn't HBO Go. I did figure out a solution though. Just go to settings > apps > google play STORE & clear app data, force stop. Then clear google play services data & that's that.

 

[B. Diddy]

The data might accumulate again, though. Let us know how things look in a few days.

 

[Mark Cross1]

My girlfriend and i just started experiencing the same problem with the same phone lg f60 metro really starting to bother us. Her phone is 6 months older than mine and we have the same problem, we don't have or play games on our phones

 

[pmode17]

I too have an LG F60 (8GB) and noticed that within the last couple of week that my Google Play services has gone from using around 150MB to using 1.2 GB which is effectively using all the space I have left in the phone. I am not sure what is going on. I can clear all the data in the manage data section of Google Play services but within a day it is back up to 1.2 GB.

 

[nsummer]

I have the first gen MotoX and same thing started to happen 10 days ago suddenly as well. Google Play services uses up to 2.9GB while it used to just be about 400MB). Deleting movies and uninstalling apps to free up storage space didn't help at all. It created space for a while and then Google play services began eating up all extra space created right away it seemed.
I am scared to clear all data - would that make me lose all downloads, stored pics and movies, and email contents by chance? (I don't know much about this kind of stuff..) If not I'd try that but I guess that might not help either according to other post?
I know my phone is old and with not much space on it but it was working just fine until recently. Just don't make sense. Please help.

 

[Slamscape]

I am having the same issue on my LG Volt, I've cleared the data several times, uninstalled any apps that i've installed in the past few days, however after a few days it's back up to using 90% of my phone space, it only started around June 30th, 2016.

 

[Slamscape]

So update, I cleared my phone off this morning after I got to work, I'm not using Wifi, I am using data. Google play services has gone from 0 MB of data storage to 401 MB since this morning, however when I check my mobile data usage of google play services I have only used a few MB today across everything. It's almost like there is a memory leak with Google play, but instead of overloading memory it's overloading storage space.

 

[ew2000]

I've been having the same problem for about 2 weeks now. First noticed when my phone's memory usage jumped from its usual 42% to 93%! I have an LG L31L phone that I've been using with no problems since April. I'm wondering if there's some sort of update that came through and goofed things up, since we all seem to have had this issue start around about the same time. Took me a while to narrow it down - did a factory reboot, uninstalled and reinstalled various programs (was convinced it must be Waze or Facebook), added a cleaner app and a couple of monitor apps. Wasn't until 2 days ago that I looked at the stats for Google Play Services, cleaned it out (it won't clear out completely - and I have to do it repeatedly for it to keep going down), and the memory issue went away. Of course, after a day, it's starting to creep back up again. Argh.

 

[stuartdisco]

I wonder if this is an LG issue. I just did a search for this issue because my LG Volt is complaining that I'm running out of space. And I see that Google Play Services is taking up almost 3GB as well. And I have noticed general memory issues for about a week now.

 

[Vikas Dhar]

My Samsung phone came with a pathetic 158 Mb and shortly after a fresh install of Stock Lite v8 Rom and trying tiny apps from Google Play Store my memory was down to ~20Mb. Internal flash memory is a serious issue as well, but by rooting my phone and removing many stock apk’s I manage to survive.Too bad that even Google Play Services wants to take between 40 and 75 MB nowadays. It simply does not fit

 

[Slamscape]

I've been clearing the data, but after 2-3 days it's back to taking up over 1gb, and it causes my phone to run hot sometimes even though no apps are being actively used. I have an LG Volt.

 

[Koekblik]

I too have similar issues with my LG-D405n phone. This started happening about a month ago.
Google Play Services keeps accumulating internal storage data until there's no space left if left unattended - to the point where other apps used during that time will simply crash and experience issues (I have lost up to several days worth of chat history on Whatsapp because of it on occasion).

I have pinpointed the issue for me to GPS usage. I used to have GPS turned off at all times and I had no issues. At some point after about a week of that issue I tried finding what could cause the issue, and it looks like (I presume an update of) Google Play Services turned the GPS back on as a "default" setting or something.
Turning off GPS seems to stop the issues for me. Without it, the data stays around the same amount for at least a week (as I haven't tested it longer yet), but the moment GPS is turned on again the storage hogging starts all over and within 1 day my phone gives the "running out of disc space" notification again. This is on "high accuracy" mode, I haven't checked the other settings.

In the past ~2 weeks I've been using GPS a lot more actively, and the issues have been going on accordingly.
In an attempt to fix it, I have used the "clear all data" option on Google Play Services, I have cleared the cache, uninstalled updates (revert to factory version of Google Play Services, causing GPS no longer to function until you update that specific part - which in turn causes the issue to rise again), installed a GPS app to delete and re-download AGPS data (which did help with the accuracy of my GPS, but did nothing for the memory issues), all to no avail.

I'm at a loss at this point on what else to try.

 

[nsummer]

Hi, Same thing suddenly started to happen in late June to me as well, and after being told that you can't do much about it other than clearing catches and admore memory or buy a new phone, I took matters into my own hands and uninstalled all updates to Google Play Music and Google Newsstand and back to factory default. Low and behold, the Google Play Services now only uses 110MB (was 3GM!) and never see my storage space memory draining by the minutes without doing anything like before ever again.
Didn't lose any of my stored songs, and you just have to start up again if you want to use the Play newsstand (I don't use it myself so no damage what's so ever).
I am not a tech person, so backup whatever you want first if you like to try this just in case thought I had no issues.

 

[Judy0023]

Thanks for this input. I've been having the same problem with my LG Volt, despite deleting practically every extraneous app possible in the past month. I'm going to try what the last writer suggested, and I'll report back on how it works.