[frusdroid]

Since adb rarely comes up on Hacker News, I got only one shot to ask how other Android uses deal with the problem of freeing up disk space without rooting the device or doing a factory reset? The number of apps is not the problem. Some apps or the OS must be filling directories with inaccessible temporary files or perhaps the OS is keeping all its old updates somewhere? On a 32M device 15 megs is lost over the course of a year. All the obvious user space tooling cannot clear or access it.

[causality0]

I gave into temptation and bought a device I can't root. Two years on, I'm resolved to never make that mistake again.

[j4hdufd8]

It's not physically possible to buy a device you can't root. You can however buy a device that is not easy to root.

[causality0]

You are aware Samsung encrypts the bootloader of their American devices, yes? If you have a way to decrypt Android 12+ Samsung bootloaders I know two separate people running unlock businesses who would love to pay you a lot of money.

[j4hdufd8]

I wouldn't tell you because I know people that pay more than your unlock businesses.

[faust201]

Always see the main folder Android inside /storage/emulated/0

Apps like Instagram or WhatsApp or even Podcast apps DUMP everything there. Many dont clear even if one uninstalls.

[DownrightNifty]

Each app also has its own private storage space as well at /data/data/<package name>/ which the end user cannot access even through adb. It's owned by the Unix user representing that app and has 700 perms so the `shell` user can't access it. While you can't access the directory directly, you can clear it in Settings -> Apps -> <app> -> Storage.

[matan-h]

aka /sdcard on most phones

[chasil]

Maybe two options...

For any unprivileged user, find the bundled apps that are unused, uninstall updates, clear their storage, then disable them.

There is also a more thorough debloat method that does not require root. It seems to be in a state of flux as it is rewritten in Rust.

https://gitlab.com/W1nst0n/universal-android-debloater/-/blo...

[folower]

Can adb show true android disk space usage without a rooted device? Either the Android system or some app is consuming half of my storage but I have no idea what or where it is. The missing storage doesn't even show up in the disk usage view and total app storage used is tiny by comparison.

[chasil]

I am on the latest LineageOS, and "df -h" does give me a lot of information, along with a reasonable figure for the device size under /storage/emulated.

I am using a ConnectBot local session to see this.

When I run this as root, the output of df is different, but it is not immediately obvious why.

If you can see the subdirectories, "du -sm *" will recurse and report usage by directory.

[adr1an]

I was able to remove YouTube thanks to Canta + Shizuku. Unfortunately, the latest android OTA upgrade breaks canta. But I'm already free of YouTube and enjoying NewPipe \o/