Android Smartphone Running Slowly? Try Deleting the App Cache
Android smartphones are great, but they are not immune to the ravages of time. While scratches or physical wear and tear can be prevented with cases and careful handling, it can be much more difficult to stop system slowdowns that can creep into the user interface until one day your phone stops feeling so fast. When that happens, you’ll spend too much time trying to figure out what this systemic quagmire is to blame and how to fix it – a frustrating process where nothing seems to be working.
After removing background apps and enabling / disabling features to restore your phone’s performance, it may seem like you only have to reset your phone to factory defaults, but not as quickly. There is one more step that you should take before such drastic measures, and that is to clear the cache of applications of your smartphone.
Clearing app caches where apps store temporary files and other data can be as effective as performing a full factory reset to restore your device’s performance and responsiveness. What’s more, this process keeps your personal data, preference configuration, and installed apps intact (although some app data, such as login information or locally saved game files, may be lost).
It is possible that some of these cached files may eventually become corrupted, causing all sorts of performance freezes such as slow loading or crashing applications, slow user interface, or full blown locks requiring a hard reset. If your device is experiencing similar symptoms, clearing app caches to remove malicious files will most likely help bring its performance back to normal.
How to remove app cache on all Android smartphones
As mentioned earlier, clearing the app cache will not delete your personal files or system settings, nor will it delete any apps, but you may lose your saved login credentials, saved games, and other temporary app data. If you want to keep these files, be sure to save them or back up your system first.
Also, if your device is still running slowly after you’ve done a cache cleanup, it’s probably time to do a full factory reset .
Android 9 Pie (9.0 and up)
While this task used to require users to boot into recovery mode to access and delete caches starting in Android 7.1 and later, Google removed the ability to batch remove app caches from recovery mode despite potential issues caused by junk files freezing. in your cache remains the same.
Batch delete caches using files from Google
It seems odd that the only solution to batch clear app caches on Android Pie – Files by Google – is not a standard inclusion and has to be downloaded separately. However, this is by far the easiest way to clear cached files.
- Download Files by Google from the app store . Make sure to give the app permission to access your storage and use the app during installation.
- Open the app. It will automatically inform you about junk files, unused / unnecessary applications and large files taking up extra space, which you can delete.
- Remove those extraneous files and apps to ease bloat and hopefully fix any issues they cause.
Delete individual app caches in Android 9 Pie settings menu
While Android 9 may not include the ability to batch delete caches by default, if you don’t want to download files from Google, you can instead delete app caches individually in system settings – honest warning, it’s tedious and the more apps you have the worse it will be.
- Open the Settings app on your device.
- Go to Apps & notifications> View all
- Tap the app name, then tap Data Usage
- Click “Clear cache”.
- Repeat for all applications
Older versions of Android (7 or earlier)
If you are not using an even older version of Android by accident, you can delete the system cache and applications in recovery mode:
- Turn off your Pixel device.
- Press and hold the Power and Volume Down buttons until your device boots into recovery mode.
- Select your preferred language
- Select “Clear data and cache”, then “Clear cache”.
- Select “Yes” to confirm.
- After the uninstallation process is complete, select “reboot” from the main menu to reboot the device and complete the operation.