When you delete a file on your Samsung phone, it doesn’t go away forever. Your phone simply deletes the reference to that file and marks the space occupied by that file as available. However, even though the space is marked as available, space isn’t infinite; your phone will eventually run out of storage space. Furthermore, deleting files doesn’t necessarily free up much storage space either. When you delete a file, your phone only removes references to that file so it no longer appears in your phone’s directories. Instead, what was once hidden is now exposed: The bits and bytes that made up that file are still there – stored somewhere within the OS. However, when you delete a file from your SD card – which is where most people store their media files – it does not remain stored in some hidden folder on your device. Rather, what was once a reference to this media is now gone for good: The bits and bytes aren’t accessible anymore since they were deleted when you emptied your trash on Samsung phones.
How to Empty the Trash on Samsung Phones
On your Samsung phone, open the File Manager app.
On the left menu, tap on “Trash”.
If there are files in the trash, they will be displayed in a list on the left side of the screen; if not, then they will be displayed as a small empty box. Tap on one of the files to display it on the right side of the screen; if it’s already empty you can simply delete it by tapping on “Delete” and confirming with “OK”.
Tap on “Empty Trash” to remove all references to that file from your phone and free up some storage space. That being said, this feature doesn’t work for photos or other media files stored in your SD card since those files are not accessible anymore after you delete them from your phone’s Trash folder.
If you want to empty the trash on your Samsung phone, simply tap on “Empty trash” once again.
Why You Should Empty Your Samsung Phone’s Trash
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Your Phone Doesn’t Have a Real Free Space Counter
You may be surprised to learn that the free space on your Samsung phone doesn’t actually tell you how much free space is available. In fact, it doesn’t even tell you how much space is used since it assumes that everything has been deleted even if you haven’t clicked “Empty Trash.” So if your phone shows 100 percent and you don’t know what to delete, it may be time to empty the trash.
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Your Phone Might Run Out of Space More Quickly
Most Samsung phones have a feature called “auto-deleting apps when memory gets low,” which in theory allows for faster phone performance by only using apps when needed. However, this feature does not work as well as expected and can actually end up deleting files from your phone unnecessarily – which can lead to more space being used up than necessary. When this happens, you can empty the trash on your Samsung phone and prevent unnecessary data loss.
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You Don’t Need Every File on Your Phone
If there are files on your phone that you don’t need anymore (for example, old photos or music files), emptying the trash can free up some valuable storage space so that other important files can be stored there instead of taking up valuable internal memory space or taking up extra room on your SD card (which is what most people use). 4. You Can Free Up Space On Your SD Card
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You Can Free Up Space On Your SD Card
Even though you can’t see it on your phone, there is always space available on your SD card. This is especially true if you only have a 16GB or 32GB phone and don’t have a lot of media files stored there. You can move some files from the internal storage to the SD card for additional space, and then empty the trash on your phone to free up space for other files that you want to store on your SD card.
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You Can Save Photos and Videos
You can also empty the trash on your Samsung phone so that you can save all of those photos and videos that you’ve taken with your phone before deleting them permanently from the device. In fact, this is still one of the best ways to save photos and videos since they are never truly lost – they exist somewhere else in case they were accidentally deleted or if they were uploaded to Google Photos or another photo-sharing site (which could happen if a file was mistakenly removed). However, when you delete something permanently from your phone it’s gone forever – as in forever, not just until an upgrade occurs or until Samsung decides it’s necessary again!
When to Empty the Samsung Phone Trash
- When you delete a file from your Samsung phone and you don’t have a backup of the file.
2. When you delete (or accidentally move) a file that is important to you.
3. When you’re running low on storage space and deleting files isn’t an option (this may be tricky since some apps, like Samsung Pay, keep track of their own data).
4. When you’re trying to free up space on your phone.
5. When you’re trying to free up space on your SD card.
6. When you want to delete a file that is in the process of being backed up (i.e., a photo or other media).
Three Ways to Free Up Space on Your Samsung Phone
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Clear the Data on You
The first way to free up space is to simply delete photos, videos and other media files that you no longer use. If you have a large number of photos, this will take some time, but it’s still faster than deleting them one by one with file manager apps. To clear the data on your SD card, go to Settings > Apps > Select the app > Storage > Clear Data.
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Clear Files from Your Phone
If you have a lot of files stored in your phone’s directory structure (for example, music or photo files), but only want a few of them available for use, you can delete the ones that are no longer in use. Go to Settings > Apps > Select the app > Storage > Delete and then select an option such as Delete cache, data or both and then confirm your choice. You can also perform this operation from within an app by selecting Clear storage in the menu bar and then selecting Clear all data or Clear cache (depending on which option appears).
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Clear Space from Your Phone Using Samsung Cloud
Samsung Cloud allows you to back up content from your phone onto a remote server so that if something happens to your phone (such as it being stolen), someone else can still access all of the content. To free up space on your device using Samsung Cloud, go to Settings > More tab> Back up & sync tab> Back Up & Sync setting> Select Samsung Cloud> Turn on backup> Back up my data.
Conclusion
The Samsung phone trash works the same way it does on computers: The trash has two sections – recent and full – and you can manually empty the full section to regain storage space. However, when you manually empty the trash, the deleted files are still stored in the OS; they’re simply removed from the phone’s directories. If you want to free up space, you’ll need to actually delete the files from the trash. In order to delete the files from the trash, you’ll need to use a file explorer app.
