Solved: Device Maintenance ... Option to free-up storage now missing

Colin9 · ‎10-02-2020

I have a Galaxy A3 (2017) and use the Device Maintenance (DM) feature to free up storage. If you open DM, then tap Storage, it used to tell you how much unnecessary storage you are using with an option to delete it. However, ever since a recent update to DM, that has disappeared from my phone. I no longer get info about the storage being taken up by rubbish files, and there is no option to delete it all in one go. The wording on the screen still says "Free up storage spaceby deleting unused data ... (etc)" but there is no way to do this. Is it just me, or has this useful feature been removed from DM ? Assuming this is deliberate rather than unintended, can anyone advise an alternative way of finding and deleting these files ? Thanks

Colin9 · ‎12-12-2020

Having raised this in the first place, I think I have finally found a solution. This may help others. No amount of clearing app caches and data really helped, my available storage kept decreasing until I only had around 300MB left and nothing would update. So I did the nuclear option and did a factory reset and restore from backup. That gained me around 3GB of storage so there'd been a lot of rubbish building up. But I also noticed that the "Clean now" button reappeared in Device Maintenance (DM) ... but then disappeared again a day or so later. I then discovered that you can revert the version of DM by uninstalling the updates. Go to Settings>Apps>Device Maintenance and tap the 3-dot menu at top right, you get an option to uninstall updates which gets you back to an earlier version of DM and the "Clean Now" button reappears permanently. You then have to prevent DM from updating, which you do from the Play Store, 3-line menu at top left, find your list of installed apps, select DM (it's called "Device Care" there), tap the 3-dot menu at top right, and untick the auto-update option. It's all working so far, by regularly using the re-instated "Clean Now" button I can keep a healthy amount of unused storage.

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CarloL · ‎02-03-2020

Hey @Colin9! Are you still having issues with this? If so, please go to: Settings > Device maintenance > Storage > Clean now. Can you delete the unwanted storage data to increase the performance of your phone now?

Click here to see 'How to set up Emergency SOS on your Galaxy Smartphone'

Colin9 · ‎02-03-2020

Thanks for your input, but that doesn't work. The "Clean now" option is missing. After an exchange with tech support via the Samsung Members app, it appears that facility has been deliberately removed from the latest app update. The only way to clean junk files now is to go into each app individually and clear the cache. Infuriating.

COS528 · ‎28-03-2020

This is complete rubish. My S7 was working great. Now it stared to have a lag because I can't clean the cache. I believe this is done on purpose so people will upgrade. I was really decided to continue with a Samsung flagship as my new phone in a year or so. Now I'm not so sure. I may go for one plus.

K20001 · ‎19-04-2020

Read other comments on here, same issue with me, last update I think was in March 2020 and "Clean up" within Storage now disappeared. You can only Optimise now. You now only have "Clean up" within Memory. Has Samsung done this so the storage builds up quickly so then you have to purchase a new phone? Really not happy at this. Do Samsung not check this Community page & add their comments?? Someone kindly suggested using the Cache within each app but I don't have that option either. I have the Samsung A50, purchased June 2019.

subseamatt · ‎02-05-2020

Yeah, I'm really not happy with Samsung for this too! Bad enough that most apps you can't move to the SD card to free up internal space (and even when you do they'll infuriatingly return to the internal memory at every update!), and then there's the continual bloatware cr@p for things I don't want and will never use but I'm forced to have them anyway taking up even more space unnecessarily.

My phone's in perfect condition and would be fine if i didnt have just 79mb of free internal space! (I don't even have many apps on it and no photos locally because they're all on my one drive.)

Samsung... #SortYourSh!tOut

IdDi · ‎11-05-2020

Samsung is getting worse every day now. Soon they'll lose respect if they continue like that.

Abdul_Wahab · ‎07-06-2020

Hey everyone, I also had this issue and fixed it easily. It is long to write and hard to tell so I made a video on it. Go check it at this video. I did put hard work to make it as simple as possible, so please help me out too by liking the video (so others can too watch it) and subscribing to my channel (don't forget the bell).

Thank you for your help in advance

CristianGabriel · ‎20-06-2020

It's not new. And they don't bother to implement a Storage Cleaner Option. That's just lazyness and careless from them and it sucks. If they keep acting like that, people will start to move away from Samsung because of their Software support policy and so on.

CristianGabriel · ‎20-06-2020

@K20001 wrote:

Read other comments on here, same issue with me, last update I think was in March 2020 and "Clean up" within Storage now disappeared. You can only Optimise now. You now only have "Clean up" within Memory. Has Samsung done this so the storage builds up quickly so then you have to purchase a new phone? Really not happy at this. Do Samsung not check this Community page & add their comments?? Someone kindly suggested using the Cache within each app but I don't have that option either. I have the Samsung A50, purchased June 2019.

I have an A50 too. Indeed they don't care about the Community and their are not doing anything about that. Their only priority is money digging with newly released smartphones while leaving the Software behind and making Software Support much worse.

Device Maintenance ... Option to free-up storage now missing

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