The problems with WP8 and the ever increasing "Other" memory category are well known so I won't go into it here. Yesterday I stumbled across a free App in the Marketplace called "Shrink Storage" by Developer Manu Bauer and it is a real lifesaver!
From what I can gatehr it works by somehow filling up all the available storage space on your phone (scary sounding!), which is then re-booted and the App then clears out the space it had filled up. In some manner this also reduces space in the "Other" category. I presume that the OS gives access to some amount of pre-assigned or 'lost' space within this category to the App, which 'owns' it by virtue of writing to it. After the re-boot is it able to release that storage, along with all the space that was 'Free' that it wrote to.
The bottom line is it works. It took about 15 minutes to write to all the space on my phone (Lumia 920), but here were the results:
Before: Total Free Storage - 5.03 Gb Amount of "Other" Storage - 9.6Gb
AFTER: Total Free Storage - 6.73 Gb Amount of "Other" Storage - 7.87Gb
Net Gain of Free Storage: 1.7Gb!
The App has excellent Reviews in the Marketplace and there are no complaints of any negative effects. The amount of storage freed up varies quite a bit, but recovery of 0.5 to 1.5 Gb is fairly common.
I will be using this app frequently form now on, and I want to give a big THANK YOU! to the Dev who has done more for us to deal with this problem with the OS than Microsoft has!
Disclaimer - I have no connection to the Dev at all, and obviously use the App at your own risk.!
MadSci
From what I can gatehr it works by somehow filling up all the available storage space on your phone (scary sounding!), which is then re-booted and the App then clears out the space it had filled up. In some manner this also reduces space in the "Other" category. I presume that the OS gives access to some amount of pre-assigned or 'lost' space within this category to the App, which 'owns' it by virtue of writing to it. After the re-boot is it able to release that storage, along with all the space that was 'Free' that it wrote to.
The bottom line is it works. It took about 15 minutes to write to all the space on my phone (Lumia 920), but here were the results:
Before: Total Free Storage - 5.03 Gb Amount of "Other" Storage - 9.6Gb
AFTER: Total Free Storage - 6.73 Gb Amount of "Other" Storage - 7.87Gb
Net Gain of Free Storage: 1.7Gb!
The App has excellent Reviews in the Marketplace and there are no complaints of any negative effects. The amount of storage freed up varies quite a bit, but recovery of 0.5 to 1.5 Gb is fairly common.
I will be using this app frequently form now on, and I want to give a big THANK YOU! to the Dev who has done more for us to deal with this problem with the OS than Microsoft has!
Disclaimer - I have no connection to the Dev at all, and obviously use the App at your own risk.!
MadSci
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