When your Amazon Fire tablet runs out of storage, you can either free up space by deleting stuff or expand the capacity with a microSD card.
Amazon Fire tablets now ship with at least 16GB of internal storage, enough to run a few games and download a bunch of shows. The latest Fire tablets support up to 512GB of external storage, making a microSD card an excellent investment. You’ll still have to clear storage occasionally, though.
We’ll show you how to find the data filling up your Amazon Fire tablet to free up space.
Managing Storage on Your Amazon Fire Tablet
If you see the Critically Low Storage error on your brand-new Amazon Fire tablet, you must deal with it. Fortunately, doing so is straightforward.
To manage your Amazon Fire tablet storage effectively, you’ll need to work through the following steps:
- Check storage
- Delete unwanted apps and games
- Delete the apps/game cache
- Use the 1-Tap Archive
- Move data to the cloud
- Manage data from your PC
- Use a space cleaning app
- Wipe your Amazon Fire tablet
- Use a microSD card
Let’s look at each of these in turn. Before proceeding, however, it’s a good idea to get a microSD card for your Amazon Fire if you don’t have one already. You can buy these from Amazon; just make sure to avoid common microSD card mistakes. Sandisk also offers an official “Made for Amazon” microSD card that’s a great value.
1. Check Your Amazon Fire Storage
Either tap the Manage Storage button on the error message, or open Settings > Storage > Internal storage to check your device’s storage. This may take a while to load if the tablet’s onboard storage is full.
In most scenarios, you’ll find that Apps & Games takes up a good chunk of the built-in storage. Tap a category to see a list of the items that take up the most space within it. This can help you prioritize which apps to clear or remove first.
It’s also common to find another couple of gigabytes swallowed up by the unhelpful, non-description of Miscellaneous. By tapping this, you’ll typically discover the Others label, which is far bigger than everything else in Miscellaneous. You cannot clear this, unfortunately.
2. Delete or Move Unwanted Apps and Games
Next, you should manage the space eaten up by apps and games. By now, you’ll know how much space this software takes up.
To delete a single game, long-tap its icon on the home screen, then select Uninstall. However, to manage games in bulk, go to Settings > Storage > Internal storage and tap Apps & Games. By default, these are sorted by name.
If you have a microSD card, switch to the SD Card Storage view to check if the games are installed on the expanded storage. To remove a game, tap it in the list, then Uninstall. Note how much storage the game uses to get an idea of how much space erasing it will free up.
Once you’ve done this, move any compatible apps and games to your microSD card. Do this in Settings > Storage, using the Move Apps to SD Card option. Note that if this is grayed out, you don’t have any apps that can be installed on the SD card.
3. Use the 1-Tap Archive
You might be reluctant to delete apps and games if you’ve paid for them. However, this really isn’t anything to worry about, as digital purchases save to the cloud. This means that you can download them to your tablet again after uninstalling, without cost.
Your Fire lets you easily archive these items to the cloud for re-downloading later. Open Settings > Storage and tap View Content. This feature ignores recent apps. Instead, it groups the apps and games you haven’t used for a while, giving you the chance to Archive them for later use.
4. Delete Unwanted Game and App Caches
Next, look at the caches for the apps and games you want to keep. Often, games retain a certain amount of data on your tablet’s storage. This even happens with games installed on the microSD card.
Before proceeding, understand that doing so will potentially result in loss of game updates and even save files.
Open Settings > Storage > Internal storage / SD Card Storage > Apps & games and wait for the list to compile. When ready, browse the games, one at a time, to see which are taking big chunks of data on your tablet storage. It’s likely that several games are contributing to your low storage. Tap the respective game, switch to its Storage page, and select Clear Cache, which will proceed without confirmation.
Note that while tapping Clear Storage will free up more space, it also completely resets the game.
5. Move Data to Amazon Photos
If you regularly create content on your Amazon Fire, then there’s a good chance this is eating up your storage. This is where Amazon Drive can help. Almost everything you buy or consume on Amazon is also available in the cloud mirror of your account, so don’t worry about losing apps or games. It often retains game progress, too.
Because photos and videos automatically sync to Amazon Drive and Amazon Photos, you shouldn’t need to move any data around. Check your Amazon Drive account to see what’s synced.
Currently, Fire devices get 5GB of free storage. Amazon Prime subscribers also get 5GB, one of many bonuses for Prime members. If you have both, you get 10GB of total storage!
6. Connect to Your PC for Closer Inspection
Another step is to connect the Amazon Fire tablet to your PC via USB and browse its contents using your desktop file manager.
On the tablet, you’ll see a notification when the device is connected. Be sure to select the File transfer option.
In your PC’s file manager, open the Internal storage to track down what’s eating up your storage. This is a slow process, and you might not even locate the responsible app. However, you should at least spot data that are best moved to your microSD card.
7. Clean Up With Files by Google
Can’t connect the tablet to your PC? Try a cleaner app. You’ll need a bit of free space on your tablet to properly install the app. If you’re really short on space, find an app, game, or other bits of data you don’t need or can easily reinstall, and remove it.
We couldn’t find a reliable app for this purpose on the Amazon App store, as Piriform’s CCleaner is no longer available. Hence, we strongly recommend installing the Google Play Store on your Fire tablet, so you can use an excellent app like Files by Google. Alternatively, you could use an APKMirror of Files by Google.
Within Files by Google, tab the Clean button and follow the cleaning suggestions, which will help you clear junk files, large files, and downloaded files. You can also sort installed apps by size and uninstall individual apps straight from within Files by Google.
8. Reset the Amazon Fire
This is the nuclear option. If none of the other fixes work, you can use a factory reset to clear your internal storage.
For safety, eject your microSD card beforehand if you have one. Make sure you’ve backed up your personal data to the Amazon Cloud Drive, because doing this will erase everything on your device.
To reset the tablet, open Settings > Device Options, and tap Reset to Factory Defaults. Hit Reset again to confirm the decision and wait while the tablet restarts. You’ll need to reconnect to your local network and sign in to the device again once it restarts. Everything should seem faster since it’s a fresh start.
9. Confirm the SD Card Is in Use
Resetting your tablet is an excellent time to get a microSD card and take advantage of the expanded storage it offers. Pay attention to where apps and games install, and you should never have to go through any of this again!
Install the card with the tablet switched off, and the card should mount when you restart the device. The tablet will then present you with the option of using the card for installing apps and games, and downloading media.
To confirm these options, open Settings > Storage and scroll down. Ensure each switch in the SD Card section is enabled. Meanwhile, use the Erase SD card option if you need to wipe the card.
It’s also possible to remove the microSD card from this menu. Use the Safely Remove SD Card button at the very bottom to stop all tasks. You’ll then be able to eject the microSD card from your Amazon Fire tablet safely.
Freeing Up Space on Your Fire Tablet Is Simple
By now, you should have created some extra space in the interior storage of your Amazon Fire tablet. Perhaps you had some games taking up too much space, or maybe hidden files were eating up the storage. With a microSD card installed, your tablet should have some free space, which will help to speed it up.
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