I emptied a trash folder I didn't know my phone had and got 12GB back

Android phones don’t offer a system-wide trash folder that you can tap and empty whenever you need to free up space. That means you have to go through individual apps, like Gallery and Files, to empty the recycle bin within each one. And like most people, that’s where I used to stop. I never really realized there was an entirely different category of files taking up space without showing up anywhere obvious.

The more I edited, the more storage I lost

The undo feature comes with a storage cost

I’ve always been diligent about emptying the trash folder in the Gallery app right after I delete any photos or videos. After all, Android doesn’t actually make that storage available until those items are truly gone from the trash as well. What I didn’t realize, though, is that the trash folder isn’t the only place where unwanted media can pile up.

Whenever I edit a photo or a video inside the Samsung Gallery app, I almost always choose the Save option instead of Save copy. My logic for this was to simply avoid duplicates. But the truth is, it didn’t matter.

Even when you choose Save, the Gallery app still keeps a copy of the original photo or video on my phone – it’s just not visible in the app. Yes, that hidden backup is what allows the Gallery app to undo edits made weeks or months ago. It’s a handy feature, no doubt, but it comes with a huge downside.

And the worst part is, those original photos and videos don’t have an expiration date. Unlike the trash folder, which automatically clears itself after 30 days, these edited backups can stick around indefinitely. That means every cropped photo and every retouched image ends up taking more storage. And this can easily go out of hand if you love editing videos like me. Even a simple trim on a 4K video can force the Gallery app to create a duplicate. So if that video was taking 500MB before, it could end up consuming twice as much.

This is easy to miss because there’s no obvious indication that it’s happening. I always assumed I was saving space by overwriting the original file, but I had no idea those backups were still taking up storage until I started digging through my phone’s storage settings.

The storage hog was hiding in plain sight

I only had to dig through the storage menu

Android’s storage menu is quite detailed. Open it, and it gives you a complete breakdown of where the storage is going, with categories like Apps, Images, Videos, Compressed files, System, and Recycle bin. Most of those are self-explanatory, but there’s one section called “Other files,” which is easy to miss.

When I checked it on my Galaxy phone, it showed me all the photos and videos I had edited using the Gallery app. And that’s where I got my surprise: nearly 12GB of storage was tied up in pre-edit backups. To put that into perspective, that’s more space than all of my videos combined. Thankfully, the cleanup process couldn’t have been simpler. All I had to do was select everything and hit Delete. The good thing is that these pre-edit backups aren’t moved to the trash folder. Once you delete them from here, they’re gone for good.

The “Other files” section also includes a couple more tabs: Pending files and Uncategorized. Unfortunately, neither of these can be cleared from this section. Pending files are files tied to unfinished processes. This could be a Chrome download that failed halfway through or a cloud upload that never completed. The Uncategorized section is simply a catch-all category for files that don’t fit neatly into Pre-edit backups or Pending files. You can select files in either category and choose the Details option to locate and delete them manually if you want.

A dedicated cleaning app is the way to go

You may already have it installed

Those pre-edit backups are just one example of the kind of storage clutter that can build up after years of use. On an Android phone, there'll always be leftover installation packages, app caches, duplicates, offline files from apps, and folders created by apps you’ve long uninstalled. These things can easily take a few gigabytes of storage without making it obvious.

Of course, you can clean these things up manually, but I feel using a dedicated app like SD Maid makes the job much less tedious. It can scour through the storage and find such junk files within seconds. If you don’t want to download a separate app for this, Files by Google also offers a cleanup tool. It can find junk files, unused apps, duplicates, and a lot more. It’s best to go through a cleanup like this every few months so you’re not wasting money by buying more storage.