Database Info

{Guide} It's not you, it's me. I need my space.

So since most are concerned with the allmighty "SAVING OF internal SPACE". Here is a sort of NOOb guide for just that and some the options that go with it. Some of these most of you may know but there are also some tidbits that I have found out about through trial and error, (No relation to forum member "Try-And-Error").
Obviously there is app2sd (2.1), app2ext, app2card, link2sd, native froyo app2sd and just plain not installing a bunch of garbage apps. There are plenty of threads about these and their uses, so I won't go into them
But did you know that you can also free up some internal memory space by just basic maintenance? You can install a Cache Cleaner from the market. I use Cache Cleaner NG (root) and CacheMate (root) which will clear your cache for you, Cache Cleaner NG will even clear your cache on your SDcard. Open Root Explorer and if you see a bunch of free floating cache files, those need to go. Wasted space. Small in the scheme of your SDcard, but still wasted.
So here we go (best part is at the bottom though):
Ok so you go into XDA on your phone, go to the themes page and look at what and how people are theming their phones or see some pix of someone's SetCPU profiles. All those develop a cache that takes up space on your phone and if you don't get rid of it, you'll run out (I have had mine up to 54mb before). Now lets say that you go to the market and look through some apps or update your apps (more on this later). This also generates cache, usually up to 2-4mb. Ever try to download something from the market and it says something like "not enough space". This not needed cache may be some of the reason.
Here are some tricks and apps that some of you may know and also some tricks that I have found that I am sure most don't know about.
SOME GOOD LOW MEMORY APPS:
Cache Cleaner NG and Cache Mate (both root and free-Cache Mate has a paid but the free one works just fine.)
Diskusage (free) ~ this one will show you a graphical version of your /data/apps and also you SD card to show you exactly what is taking up so much space. You can click on that thing and hit "Show" and it will take you to the app's page in Manager Applications. It also has a root function too that will allow you to see what is in /system, /cache, /data,…
Some sort of file manager to get to some things I'll mention below. (I use Root Explorer)
SOME MEMORY CLEARING TIPS AND TRICKS:
Home Launcher ~ If you have a 3rd party home launcher, see if it has the ability to long-press an icon to take you to its screen in the Manage Apps section. I use ADWex and if you long-press on say Market, it takes me to the same place as is I were to go to Settings->Applications->Manage Apps->Market. Instead of all that, just long-press on the icon and BAM! it takes you there. Here you can clear out your cache for the market or delete the data (if you need to do that). Or clear the cache of the XDA app b/c you looked at too many pix.
Browsers ~ These develop cache that takes up memory and space, especially the stock browser. If you use a 3rd party, you can get the settings to clear cache, cookies, passwords,…on exit. I use Dolphin, but I am pretty sure that most have something like this on them. (side note: most 3rd party browsers once exited will not run in the background unlike the stuck one)
Media ~ So you download a bunch of mp3's from the net or click on some pix and save it to your SD card. Or maybe you just felt like wiping your card and having a fresh start. Every time you reboot, you phone will scan media. No big deal, but the more you criss-cross things from PC to phone and back again, it can create a bunch of double files in your media cache on the phone. With the proper placement of .nomedia files (this prevents your media scanner from doing just that, scanning media- i.e. pix, jpegs,…Don’t place a .nomedia in your music, album art or DCIM files**bad), Every once in a while, I'll hit the Diskusage or go to Manage apps and clear the media cache. Then I got to my file manager and the DCIM->Thumbs and delete the .Thumbnails files (should be 2). Unmount the SD card and remount to start the media scan, pull up the Gallery and wait for the thumbs to come back (depending on how many you have, this could take awhile). By doing this you can get almost 5 mb back if you have a bunch of double scans in your media folder.
AND NOW FOR SOME TIPS THAT MOST COULD NOT KNOW:
Lets say that you have your phone plugged into your PC and for some reason you, in a fit of rage, jerk the plug out without unmounting it first. This creates a file that is put into your LOST DIR folder on your SD card. Anytime you don't safely unmount the SD card, it will create a file in that folder. In the scheme of the SD card, it isn't too much, but I don't like having useless items free floating about.
So you are downloading an update from the market and for some reason your phone freezes and the Force close-Retry-Wait doesn't work out for you. You have to do a battery pull. Frustrating I know and the memory takes a hit too. Every time you have to do a battery pull because of a freeze up or something of the like, it creates a TOMBSTONE file in /data. These are useless and can be deleted. If you are flashing ROMs and are constantly having to do battery pulls b/c market crashes or an app freezes, then you are creating a Tombstone file.
**Here is where your file manager (with root) will help. Go into /data and scroll all the way to the bottom and open /tombstone. There should be some files in there and depending on how many there are, I could be a nice chunk of wasted memory. Just select all and delete. They are not needed. Your internal memory should go up by doing this.
Same scenario, but now go into /data/ cache or /cache and you'll see Dalvik-Cache (don’t mess with this), Lost & Found and Recovery. If you tried to download an app and it got frozen for some reason and had to do a battery pull, the apk will be free floating in there, uninstalled. You can delete this. While it isn't in the Dalvik-Cahce folder, it is taking up space. Once you are able to download something completely and correctly from the market, it will populate into Dex correctly and won't be a free radical, as I like to say.
Obviously this is not all encompassing, but just some things that I have found along the way that some of the newer people may not know and just wondered about. And as usual, always make back ups and I am not responsible.
p.s ~ Didn’t mean for this to be a manifesto-sized, but some of the things above needed scenarios to make sure you understand.

Wow very detailed. Thumbs up for the effort to explain to us!
Sent from my Milestone using XDA App

Just bookmarked it, very useful!

apps aren't in the drawer

I have a question about the app drawer...any apps installed on my sd card don't show up .....but the really wierd thing is that its completely random. sometimes some will be there some time others will be, but its only apps installed on the sd. I know they are there, I can see them in the task manager...

cancel this.....cleared the dalkiv cache and we r all good!!

akajunior said:
I have a question about the app drawer...any apps installed on my sd card don't show up .....but the really wierd thing is that its completely random. sometimes some will be there some time others will be, but its only apps installed on the sd. I know they are there, I can see them in the task manager...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same issue. I have programs not listed in the app drawer and I know they are there. I can open them through the Market.
I tried wiping the dalvik cache and they are still not there.

My problem persists!! When I wipe the cache, some, but not all apps on sd card show up in the app drawer.This is pretty frustrating...there's a 2.3.6 app in the making, that I tried a beta version. This issue did not occur. I used it for 2 days, and when he tweaks the bugs, I'll be all over it!!!!!

[Q] Low memory problem?

I'm seriously fed up with uninstalling apps/updates when I want to install something else, and I will always have to clear cache, clear data of my Facebook or even to the point contacts, when I need to install a new app/an update.
Is there a fix to this yet?
P.S.: I did use the search button, but couldnt find what Im looking for.

it's my problem too ( . please help me . The Internal memory is very low !

Yeah sadly, android isn't doing anything to fix that. T.T

Actually, "Android" can fix that if you're able to root your ChaCha and partition your SD, "faking" a bigger internal memory.
HTC isn't doing anything to fix that, because this is a hardware problem that can't be totally solved using only software updates. They also don't want to open the bootloader so anyone can root and modify the partitions, that's why this is a big problem to this phone.
HTC ChaCha was destined to teenagers that don't want to use any app other than Facebook. That's the truth.

A Possible Solution
I recently got a ChaCha (AT&T Status) mainly because it has such a nice keyboard and I don't like virtual keyboards. It was also a bargain. I don't do Twitter, and I rarely go to Facebook. So these (and other) AT&T supplied apps are just wasting memory space on my phone. I was frequently running into the memory limitation problems (inability to update apps, inability to synch, etc.). But since ATT disallows removal of these apps, we're stuck. Or are we?
If you look at the applications manager under downloads tab, you'll see the updates to facebook, twitter, and other pre-installed apps are huge. While the apps themselves cannot be uninstalled, the updates can be, which is what I have done. First, I went to the market and un-checked the automatic update box so they won't be updated again. Then I uninstalled the updates for Facebook and Twitter on my phone. I also unstalled the updates for the ATT Code Scanner app. Although I might find a code scanner useful, I reasoned there are other code scanner apps out there (probably better ones judging from the typical AT&T Software ) and the other apps could be transfered to the SD card, using very little internal memory.
Anyway, the result is I now have about 39-40MB of free memory . I still can't wait for the gurus here to come up with a permanent solution, but in the meantime, I think I have solved my memory issue.

Hmm running 2.3.5 here and since that I have around 40mb free.
I am using FB, twitter and a bunch of other apps. Trying to clear cache for a lot of apps weekly though.

Check the Everything for ChaCha thread (also in my signature).

Alex C. said:
Check the Everything for ChaCha thread (also in my signature).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All great suggestions. Unfortunately, most of them require a rooted phone which means I can't use them.

Only one which can help you in this case is a factory reset.

yea..i having the same problem too although had upgrade to android 2.3.5..is there other way to solve this pity fewer of memory?

[APP][2.1+] Cache Cleaner

Guys, check out our open-source cache cleaner! We hate ads, so no ads here. Also has a native Holo look&feel, is small and minimalistic. Does exactly what it is supposed to, nothing more, nothing less, and therefore requires only 2 permissions, both strictly related to cache cleaning!
Targets:
Keep it simple, stupid
No ads
Holo look and feel
Fast and clean
Does not require root
That says it all.
Google Play: Cache Cleaner
GitHub repository: Frozen-Developers/android-cache-cleaner
Feel free to submit your pull requests

I like it. Nice clean and simple UI. Two critiques:
- The app size seems a little big for what it does. It's about 2.2M. For comparison, "Cache Cleaner+" is a similar app, but it only takes about 500k.
- It does not clear all cached data for some apps. For example, the game "Big Win Basketball" downloads a crapload of cached files to the SD card, which on my phone is an emulated SD card in internal storage. Running this app does not clean those files. If I go into the system app manager and clear the cache there, it clears much more data. It would be nice if your app could use the same method so the cleaning would be more thorough.
Note: The second critique issue is not unique to your app. I've tried a bunch of other cache cleaners and they generally do the same thing as yours (i.e. they do not fully clean the cache for some apps). There are a couple others like Cache Cleaner NG that have some ability to clean cache on the SD card, but they don't have as nice of a UI as yours, and they still don't clean everything that the system app manager does. If you could make your app clean in the same way the system app manager does, that would really set it apart from all the other cache cleaners.
Thanks

Awesome ui! And functions super quick on the note 2. Thank you
Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk

Cleaner apps are real ?

Hello there, how are you ppl ? Just reading xda forums found a lot of stuff that I was wrong about but people love to sell it to you so, I want to ask, any of all cleaning apps is real ? I mean, do a real better performance ? I am not talking about battery save or something like that, I mean some apps says "Clears unwanted cache on just one tap" "RAM cleaning" and so on.

RAM cleaning is exactly the same as opening your recents and swiping or clearing them all.
Cache is actually supposed to improve performance (app start times). When you start an app, it is loaded into the cache. After you exit, the system still keeps it cached and if you ever want to relaunch it, it will open faster.
Clearing the cache will make it start the whole caching process again and it will also take slightly longer to start.
In my opinion, those cleaner apps are unnecessary. The performance gains are negligible.

No, they are not. Specially on the latest Android OS builds.