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I keep getting the "Low on Space: Application data space is low. To free up" [the rest is cut off] message.

I've moved every app I can over to the SD card, cleared the cache, compacted my K9 mail cache.

Advanced Task Killer (ouch!) says I have 98M Available Memory

File Manager says I have 223M/748M (29%) free.

That's not so bad -- but I'm stuck in the no-updates scenario. The market downloads won't really start, gmail won't update, etc. I've rebooted several times, and nothing changes. Aaaargh.

What can be done, other than uninstalling everything ?

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  • FWIW, I've been getting these often with my HTC Incredible. Clearing the data in HTC Sense seemed to be the one thing that solved the issue for me. (I'm using Zeam launcher besides.)
    – gary
    Commented May 29, 2011 at 15:37
  • See here how Android calculates your personal space limit: code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=4991#c145
    – OneWorld
    Commented Jan 5, 2012 at 12:50

5 Answers 5

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This timely post from Lifehacker may help... Were you the one who emailed them? ;)

What Should I Do When My Android Runs Out of App Space?

Here's the summary, in order of easy to hard:

  1. Move Bigger Apps to SD Storage - currently requires Froyo (2.2). Navigate to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications (or something similar). View the All Tab, sort by size. You can't do anything about the big hitters, namely Gmail, Browser and Maps will always be pretty big.

  2. Clear the Cache, and Maybe Data, on Some Apps Similar to #1, navigate to Settings > Applications.

  3. Clear Out Apps You Don't Actually Use Shouldn't this be #1? ;)

  4. Android 2.2: Set Your SD Card as the Default Installation Location LifeHacker points to the Androinica blog how-to here.

  5. Root Your Phone and Set Up Apps2SD Disclaimer: rooting may not be fun for non-geeks. LifeHacker how-to-root and custom firmware CyanogenMOD (also supplied by LifeHacker).

Of course some of the comments on the post are helpful as well. Hope it helps.

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You can use an app like DiskUsage to see which applications are taken up the most memory on the internal storage.

Clearing the cached data stored by app (from application screen in settings) is also a way of freeing up space temporary.

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It may be time for you to start removing old applications that you no longer use or don't use very frequently. You've already moved your apps to the SD card and cleared your caches, there isn't much more you can do.

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  • And rebooting the device after doing all these things. This way the "Low storage" message will disappear. Otherwise, we risk to see this message "sticking" there no matter how well we do the cleaning.
    – Cristiana Nicolae
    Commented Apr 21, 2015 at 11:57
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Ok guys I was having this problem a couple of days ago... I reset my device, deleted all the apps, had LOADS of free space but when I tried to install something it would tell me "insufficient storage available"

I searched everywhere, for more than a week, and found nothing. Now, i found the solution, and want to help everyone that is happening the problem!

Get Storage Analyser then open it, and you will see that instead of having free space, you will have -xxxx!

Yes! A negative number! According to my phone I had -8GB of space! There was this rogue app from Gameloft that used up all my space! And didn't get deleted with a factory reset!

Open the Storage Analyser and delete the huge app/folder! Then reboot and the problem will be solved! I promise 100% that this works. I recommend opening the app once a week and deleting the useless big stuff!

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  • Please DO NOT use URL shorteners here.
    – ale
    Commented Jan 17, 2014 at 19:17
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    Storage Analyser app is no longer to be found. I've clicked on the given link and got a blank page with this announcement on Google Play website: "We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server."
    – Cristiana Nicolae
    Commented Apr 21, 2015 at 11:36
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I tried all the standard cache cleaning and uninstalling updates which helped a lot. I tried storage analyser but that didn't help the internal storage. Wasn't keen on rooting the phone. Then I came across Clean Master and used it on my wife's Samsung Ace which is notoriously short on internal memory and no option to move most apps to the SD card. So far so good.

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