The hidden tricks of Storage Sense

Do you want to better track the storage space on your Lumia smartphone so you don’t have to delete your most important selfies, cute videos of your dog or music tracks? Keep reading.

Let’s say you’re running out of available space on your Lumia smartphone. After sizing up your device from all angles, you arrive at the conclusion that you need to let go and delete some of your special moments.

Before you do, see what’s taking up space on your handset with the Storage Sense feature for Windows Phone 8.1. We mentioned it briefly here, but let’s go in-depth.

Storage on your smartphone

In a nutshell, Storage Sense lets you track your Lumia’s storage as “used” and “free.” Available under Settings, you can pin the feature to your Start screen for a quick peek.

If you take photos in raw format like I do or keep your entire music library on your Lumia, you will notice your storage indicator showing you less free space, as shown above.

As you dive deeper, you’ll quickly learn which apps, games or videos are taking up the most space. Storage Sense can notify you when you’re nearly out of free space, whether on your internal phone storage or SD card.

Delete temporary files

You should also check out  your “temporary files.” Just like in your Windows PC, these are files that get created and deleted during normal use and also include Internet Explorer history, cookies and temporary storage.

Smart Storage sense lets you erase temporary files by tapping the delete option. Tap Internet Explorer settings to “delete history” or head to “advanced settings” to delete additional data that gets stored by the sites you visit.

Here are more tips to help free up space in an organized fashion.

Save files to OneDrive

Offering you amazing storage space is OneDrive, which comes with your Lumia smartphone running Windows Phone 8.1. Back-up or move files (photos, video, documents) from your Lumia to your OneDrive account. Once done, delete the files from your phone.

Synchronize your Lumia with your computer

Your Lumia smartphone works seamlessly with Windows and Mac operating systems thanks to the Windows Phone app. After syncing and importing photos, videos, or whatever you want to transfer to your PC or Mac, hit delete to make way for more space.

Delete old and rarely used stuff

Be ruthless: Delete apps, games or music that you rarely listen to and photos and videos you rarely watch to make way for new memories.

Have you cleaned up your Lumia yet? Do you find Storage Sense helpful?