Galaxy S22 suddenly out of storage

[Alexandrius47]

Hi!

My phone is only a month old and everything has been running okay but today I tried recording a video and noticed a weird thing.

Usually when recording it says how many minutes of video are left and that number used to be around 55 minutes of recording left, however today I noticed it said only 18 minutes available. I went to the Device care/ Storage and found out that my system takes up 85Gb! This for sure wasnt the case a few days ago as I could record videos for however long.

I have tried cleaning cache partition in recovery mode, but with no effect.

Any ideas what could suddenly happen and how to free the storage back would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

[TessM]

Hi @Alexandrius47 ,

happy to have a look at this with you. At first sight it seems that most part of the storage is taken by apps, videos and the system. Have you installed anything recently?

[Alexandrius47]

Hi TessM,

the system size is what bothers me the most. I haven't installed any app recently. Today is the first time I noticed the lack of space on my phone. I am pretty sure this wasn't an issue a few days ago.

[TessM]

Hi @Alexandrius47 ,

I have had a look at my S21+ and the system is taking 47.94GB, which seems right to me having the software and all the apps running on the latest version. Is there any system app that you used quite often and may be taking a bit more storage than usual?

[Glenntech]

The system takes up 75.59 Gb on my phone. So yours is only about 10Gb more than mine. This can be explained if you bought your phone through a network provider and have extra software installed.
Do you need all the apps on the phone. I have a clear out every now and again if I don't use apps for a long while.
Consider storing photos and videos in a cloud based backup and removing them from your phone

[Joeeye]

That is very unusual for a 128GB model. Typically the larger storage models have significantly larger system usage, my 128GB S22 Ultra model for example uses 26.61GB of system whilst my 512GB S21 Ultra uses 92.78GB.

[Alexandrius47]

@TessM  I am not sure if that counts as a system app, but I use clock app to set timers and alarms daily and I use camera app almost every day too.  I delete almost all of my videos and pictures once I upload them online. Like I mentioned the sudden inability to record long videos was the reason I even looked at what is going on with phones storage as it was a non issue before

@Glenntech I did buy the phone through a carrier but I dont see any extra software on the device and I hadnt have any issue for like a month or two up until today. I only have a few apps on my phone and I use them all.

@Joeeye yes! That is why it caught my attention. 26Gb of system sounds reasonable and it matches numbers from other users Ive seen online. 85Gb is too much so I am looking for some solutions

[Robin999]

Same phone as you also purchased from carrier and mine is only 25.70GB. Apps are 15.4GB. Definitely something not right with yours. I do remember another post with your problem and there was a simple solution. I'll have a dig around and try to find it.

Can't find the post sorry but I did see this. Might help?

The space is being used up by your apps if you have also got a question mark by the apps above in the list. To fix this you need to enable "usage data access" for all apps then the other should reduce to 0 and you will be able to view the breakdown of all app storage usage. If you click on the question mark by apps it should take you to the right settings area. If not go to settings then select apps. Click on the three dots at the top and select special settings then scroll down to select usage data access. Make sure it is toggled on for all apps. Then you just need to go back to the storage breakdown, click on apps and go through and uninstall/ delete the ones you don't need.

[Alexandrius47]

Definitely somethings up! I have seen this solution, while researching the issue online, but there is no question mark by apps as you can see in the screenshot. I made sure all the apps have access so I can get accurate readings on data and 14Gb seems about right for my apps. That leads me to believe that 85Gb of system is also a legit number, but something must have gone wrong.

[Robin999]

Tut, ahh well worth a try. I wonder if you can see what's taking space in the system folder if you hook up to a laptop/PC?