What Is "Other" Storage on Android?
Short answer
"Other" is Android's residual bucket for files it cannot sort into Images, Video, Audio, Apps or Documents — mainly app caches, orphaned media from uninstalled apps, downloaded update packages and .nomedia folders. Most of it is clearable through Settings → Storage and Files by Google, but a few gigabytes belong to the system partition and are not removable at all.
On this page
Open Settings → Storage on an Android phone and you get a tidy breakdown: Images, Videos, Audio, Documents, Apps, System. Then there is a category called Other, holding somewhere between three and thirty gigabytes, with no explanation and usually no way to tap into it.
Unlike iOS, Android will actually let you go and look at what is in there. It is worth knowing which parts you can act on before you do.
What Android puts in “Other”
Android’s storage screen works by scanning the filesystem and classifying files by type and location. Anything the scanner recognises goes into a named category. Everything else falls through to Other:
| Contents | Typical size | Safe to remove? |
|---|---|---|
| App caches | 1–8GB | Yes, always |
| Orphaned files from uninstalled apps | 0.5–4GB | Yes |
| Downloaded APKs and update packages | 0.5–3GB | Yes |
Media in .nomedia folders |
1–10GB | Depends on the app |
| Files with unrecognised extensions | Varies | Check first |
| System and firmware partitions | 4–8GB | No — not reclaimable |
That last row is the one that frustrates people. A meaningful slice of Other is the operating system itself plus recovery and firmware partitions, and no setting, cleaner app or factory reset will return it. On a 128GB phone you should expect roughly 100GB usable before you install anything.
Look at it properly first
The path to the storage breakdown differs by manufacturer:
| Phone | Path |
|---|---|
| Pixel / stock Android | Settings → Storage |
| Samsung (One UI) | Settings → Battery and device care → Storage |
| OnePlus, Oppo, Xiaomi | Settings → About phone → Storage |
On Pixel, tapping a category opens Files by Google filtered to it. On Samsung, tapping Other gives you a direct file listing sorted by size, which is more useful than anything stock Android offers.
Note the figure before you start so you can tell whether anything you do actually works.
Clear the parts that are safe
App caches, through the system
Every app’s cache counts toward Other. Clearing it is always safe — the app rebuilds what it needs and you stay logged in.
Go to Settings → Apps, sort by size, and work down the list. For each large app, tap Storage → Clear cache.
Do not tap Clear data or Clear storage. Those reset the app to a fresh install, log you out, and delete local content. The buttons sit next to each other. On WhatsApp specifically, Clear storage wipes local chats — the safe route is WhatsApp’s own storage manager, covered in why WhatsApp takes so much storage.
Everything Files by Google finds
Google’s Files app is pre-installed on most phones and is better at this than the Settings screen, because it looks in places the storage scanner classifies as Other.
Open it and go to the Clean tab. The cards that matter here:
- Junk files — app caches and temp files, safe.
- Downloaded files — the Downloads folder, where installers, PDFs and stray attachments accumulate for years.
- Unused apps — each one is carrying its own cache.
- Duplicate files — usually photos saved twice by different apps.
Samsung’s equivalent is Battery and device care → Storage → Clean now, which is less thorough but does the same job for caches and trash.
Orphaned app folders
When you uninstall an app, Android removes the app but frequently leaves its
folder under Android/data or on the root of internal storage.
In Files by Google, go to Browse → Internal storage and look for folders named after apps you no longer have. Those are safe to delete.
Folders belonging to apps you do still have are not. Deleting a live app’s data folder is equivalent to clearing its data, with the same consequences and no confirmation dialog.
The one manual case worth doing
WhatsApp keeps old local database backups that nothing automatically removes.
Browse to Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Databases. Files named
msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD.1.db.crypt14 are dated backups — the newest is your restore
point, and the older ones are dead weight, often several gigabytes of it.
Why the numbers never quite add up
Two things make Other appear larger than the files you can find:
Media hidden by .nomedia. A folder containing a file called .nomedia
tells Android’s media scanner to skip it. Messaging apps and some galleries use
this to keep their files out of your photo gallery — but the storage scanner
skips them too, so they land in Other rather than Images or Videos.
Delayed recalculation. Android caches the storage breakdown and updates it on its own schedule. Clear 4GB and the figure may not move for an hour. Restart the phone if you want it refreshed immediately.
What to avoid
- Cleaner and booster apps from the Play Store. They clear caches you can clear in Settings, and Android already evicts cache automatically under pressure. Most are advertising vehicles asking for far broader permissions than the job needs.
- Deleting folders under Android/data blindly. These belong to installed apps and removing the wrong one breaks the app in ways that are hard to diagnose afterwards.
- Chasing the last few gigabytes. Once Other is down to 4–6GB you are looking at the system partition. It is not going anywhere.
- Factory resetting to clear Other. It removes the user portion, keeps the system portion, and costs you your whole setup.
Realistic expectations
Clearing caches and running Files by Google typically takes Other from 12–15GB down to 5–7GB, and most of that comes back over the following weeks because caches are supposed to exist.
If Other is genuinely enormous and stays that way, the cause is almost always one app hoarding media the scanner cannot see — messaging apps and games are the two usual answers. Finding that app matters more than the general cleanup; the wider sequence in how to free up Android storage covers where the rest of the space goes.