There is not enough memory for Android applications. Solution to the problem: "There is not enough space in the device memory." Google Play and its errors

Manufacturers of Android devices have one significant advantage over Apple products - the ability to use any amount of memory, both physical and RAM. If the manufacturer is lazy about optimizing the operation of the device, then it simply increases gigabytes of RAM. If you don’t want to install expensive flash memory, you can always install a memory card reader in your smartphone - modern devices already support working with terabyte-sized memory cards. True, using memory cards does not always work as it should.

If you look at all the Nexus and Pixel smartphones, you will see that they do not have memory card support. This was done for two reasons. Firstly, Flash memory, although expensive, provides higher data processing speed. If the system stores some information on a memory card, then each access to it will require a certain time, which will lead to a decrease in the overall speed of the system. Secondly, by depriving users of the ability to install memory cards, Google is pushing them to use its cloud services to store data, photos and music.

However, most Android device manufacturers do not hesitate to use memory cards in expensive and budget models. This is especially true in devices of the lower price segment, where the manufacturer can reduce the cost of the device by using 4 or 8 GB of internal memory, but allowing the user to install a memory card.

Although Android displays the total free memory as a single unit, the system actually separates internal and external memory. Therefore, the appearance of the “Not enough free memory” error means that you are running out of the amount of built-in memory necessary to install applications. In this case, there may be at least a terabyte of free memory on the memory card.

The second possible reason for the “Not enough free memory” error to appear is a lack of RAM caused by incorrect Android behavior. Under normal conditions, the system itself monitors how RAM is used, leaving applications running in the background or closing them if there is not enough memory. If you have a powerful modern device, then you can easily open several tabs in the browser, launch a heavy game, and then return to the browser. In this case, the pages that you opened earlier will remain in their place. On devices with little RAM, the system will forcefully close the browser, and when you access it again, the pages will load again. This is why everyone loves expensive flagships so much and suffers when using budget smartphones.

If you are facing low RAM on your device, then Android is not good at regulating RAM usage. In this case, you should try the following:

– Close running applications yourself. This can be done from the multitasking menu.

– Prevent applications from running in the background. Android freely allows all applications to run in the background, so they can wake up from time to time to update data. If you rarely use a particular application, you can prevent it from updating in the background in Settings > Applications.

– Install third-party software to automatically close processes. The Google Play catalog has many applications that allow you to manage the device’s RAM and unload all applications from memory in a few clicks. But do not forget that such applications themselves take up space in RAM.

– Clear browser cache, Google Play store and Google Services

Often, when downloading applications from the Play Market, users see an error that says: “There is not enough free Android memory.” But do not worry, since this problem is solved quite simply.

Why is Android not enough?

All users of smartphones based on the Android OS download games and utilities from Google Play. However, the time comes when, when installing an application, it is interrupted and the message “Insufficient free Android memory” appears. And this story repeats itself with all programs. Fixing this problem is simply simple: you need to clear the device’s memory. This is done in the following ways:

• get rid of temporary files and cache;
• clear program data;
• remove updates for some applications;
• fix the error in Google play.

The first and one of the easiest ways to free up your device that comes to mind is to remove unnecessary utilities and games or transfer them to a memory card. In the latter case, only the register of these programs will remain on the phone and To do this, go to Settings||Applications, go to the “All” tab and sort by size (for convenience). We find any program that can be moved, open information about it, where we select “Move to SD card”.

However, if there is essentially nothing to delete, and all programs are needed or are already based on a flash drive, you can use other methods.

Clearing the cache

If there is not enough free Android memory, the first thing you need to do is clear the cache. Special applications such as Clean Master and CCleaner will help us with this. By the way, they are not only able to clear memory of temporary files, but also speed up RAM, as well as delete unnecessary data from the memory card (music, photos, etc.).

Open the application, click on “Trash”. After the scanning is completed, check the boxes of what we want to delete, then click clear. In addition, it will help remove installed programs and speed up the processor (that is, stop utilities running in the background).

C C leaner

Launch CCleaner, click "Analyze". After analysis, we mark what should be deleted, then “Clear”. It is also possible to delete unnecessary files on the memory card.

Deleting application data

If, after cleaning with special utilities, there is still not enough free Android memory, you can delete the data of some programs (for example, a log of searched words in dictionaries, a saved account and a cache of downloaded pictures on social networks, saves and accounts in games, etc. .). Sometimes this data can weigh 20-50 MB, which will not interfere at all when downloading new programs.

We also go to “Applications”, which are in the settings, select everything and sort by size. We open information about some utility and see how much space the data takes up. If it’s a couple of megabytes or more, feel free to clean it (if it’s less, it’s pointless). Click “Clear data” and “Clear cache” (if any, of course). There should now be enough memory.

If there is still not enough space and “Android” writes “Not enough free memory,” then you can easily “demolish” updates of some utilities, for example, the same Google play. However, it is worth remembering that all of his settings will be deleted, so he will immediately start installing updates on everything.

Problems in Google play

Errors often occur in Google Play itself, when the error “Not enough free Android memory” pops up, although in fact there is plenty of it. To do this, you need to clear the cache in the Play Market itself and some of its components. However, this must be done manually, since specialized utilities cannot handle this.

Go to “Settings” and, as usual, to “Applications”. Open the Google Play Store utility, go into it and click on “Clear cache”, and then on “Clear data”. We perform the same actions with the components "Google Play services", "Downloads" and "Google services Framework".

Reboot the device. Then we try to download again.

Which differ in their parameters. One of the most important parameters is the amount of memory of the device. Some manufacturers make smartphones even without an SD card slot, as they produce devices with a considerable amount of internal memory, for example 64GB or 128GB. But no matter how much memory your smartphone has, even if you have an SD card, sometimes the Play Store throws up an error when downloading with the message “Insufficient memory on the device.”

Really out of memory

Sometimes apps won't download because the phone has actually run out of memory. So you need some applications etc. If you free up some memory, you can download new applications.

Error when downloading heavy games

The second situation is when the error Insufficient memory on the Android device appears when downloading heavy games (GTA, Most Wanted, etc.). There may be several options here.

The first option is when there is not enough space on the memory card. The cache of a heavy game takes up more than 2GB, and is often installed on a memory card (if you have one) and located in the “Android” folder. And if your memory card is full to capacity, then you certainly won’t have enough space for a cache. To do this, clean the SD card so that the Play Market does not throw up an error.

And the second option is when the internal memory is by default. And again, you don't have enough memory to load the cache. In this case, in the settings you need to set the SD card as the default memory. Then everything you download from the Play Store will be downloaded to the flash drive.

There is a lot of memory, but an error appears

This is a glitch of the Play Store itself, but it can be easily solved.

If you have Android version 4.4.2 and lower, proceed as follows:

• Go to settings;
• Select the “Applications” item;
• We are looking for the Google Play Market (Do not confuse it with Google services);
• Click "Clear cache".

After that, try downloading the desired application again. If the error continues to appear, then go to Settings, Applications again, and select Play Store.

• Click “Erase data”;
• Click “Uninstall updates”.

After this, you can launch the Play Store. If an error appears and the phone will not connect to the Market, restart the phone.

After these steps, the Play Store will look slightly different, since you have erased the updates, and now you have an old version of the program, but it works. Over time, the Market will be updated to a new version.

Now let's talk about Android 5.0 and higher.

With newer versions of Android, all the steps are almost the same:

• Go to settings;
• Let's go to applications;
• We look for the Play Market and select it;
• Tap on the “Storage” tab.
• Click “Clear cache”.

Let's try to download the program. If the error continues, then go back and erase the data in the same place where you cleared the cache. Press the back button, then tap on the three dots in the upper right corner and click on “Uninstall updates.” Reboot your smartphone and rejoice.

If none of the methods helped

In this case, there are two versions: either a software failure or . In any case, first install an antivirus program. Just download it in .apk format from a third-party site. Then install an antivirus and scan the system. If you find a virus, then remove it. If the system is virus-free, then only a system reset will help.

To do a reset, go to settings, scroll down and click on “Backup and reset”, and then click on “Reset settings”. The system will return to factory settings.

Conclusion

No one is immune from this error, when there is not enough memory on the Android device. She can appear at any moment.

In this article, we tried to figure out why such an error still appears, and also examined methods for solving it.

More articles on the topic of the Guide.

This is the question we received from one of the users of our site, Alexey. He writes that when downloading an application from the Google Play Store, an error is displayed: “The application could not be downloaded. There is not enough space in the device memory." At the same time, there is plenty of memory space - at least several gigabytes, while the size of the downloaded application is only a few megabytes. What to do, what to do?

This is what the error looks like when downloading the application:

Let’s say right away that there is no single solution to this problem, so let’s consider various options that can help cope with the problem.

Clearing the cache in the Google Play app

If you believe numerous reviews on the RuNet, the first thing the user needs to do is clear the cache for the Google Play application. It is primarily recommended to take this action in cases where there is a lot of space on the device, but the application is not installed.

Go to the settings of your phone or tablet.

Select the “Applications” section.

Find the Google Play Store or Google Play Services application (the name may vary depending on the firmware) and tap on it.

Here, click on the “Erase data” button, then “Clear cache”.

After that, try to install the application from the Market. This method should help you.

Make sure there is actually enough memory

In some cases, the available memory may not be correct. For example, you think there are a few more gigabytes of memory available, but in reality there are only a few megabytes available. To make sure you have free memory, go to settings and select the “Memory” section.

As you can see, in our case there is very little free memory and if you install applications several hundred megabytes in size, there really won’t be enough space.

Clear the contents of your device

If there is really not enough memory, you need to get rid of junk and unnecessary applications, as well as files.

To delete temporary files, cache data, etc., it is better to use a special application, for example, Clean Master. Download it, run it, then click on the “Trash” button.

When the system finds all unnecessary and temporary files, simply click on the “Clean” button.

This way you can free up quite a lot of space, but if it is still not enough, we recommend deleting unused applications that are usually always present.

In some cases, the memory is occupied by various files, for example, music, video files, photos, etc. They need to be deleted manually, preferably using a file manager. We use ES Explorer. Find the file or folder that you want to delete, tap on it, highlight it and click on the trash can icon.

Often there can be a lot of such files and deleting them frees up a huge amount of memory.

Transfer applications to a memory card

If you have a memory card and have the ability to transfer applications to it from the main memory, use this option so as not to delete applications.

To do this, go to settings, then to the “Applications” section. Here, select the desired application and click on the “Move to SD card” button (in our case, the button says “Go to SD card”).

Please note that system applications are not migrated. It is possible that your device does not have the ability to transfer applications to a memory card at all.

What else can help?

Tips from the web that may or may not help. If it is worth using them, it is only in the most extreme cases, when nothing helps at all. You can try:

• Uninstall updates for the Google Play application.

• Delete cache and data not only for the Google Play application, but also for the Google Service Framework.

• Clear Dalvik cache using .

• Do . In this case, all data will be cleared and files will be deleted.

“The application could not be installed/updated because the device memory is full” - many Android users have seen this message more than once. How to make up for the lack of MB and whether you need to do it at all, read our article.

How to check the amount of free memory

If you see a message about low memory, the first thing we do is check its (memory) status. Perhaps some update or downloaded file weighed more than you thought, and now the system really does not have enough free megabytes to complete the specified procedure. So, to check the phone's memory status:

If there really aren’t enough megabytes, let’s start cleaning the phone from unnecessary data. If there is enough, we will look for the cause of the problem and fix it.

How to free up additional memory on your device

If you have too much information stored on your device, the easiest option to clear the memory is to move some of the files to another device. This is not difficult to do, you just need to transfer the photos and videos you took, downloaded files, etc. to them. The folders listed below are of main interest to us:

But what if they are all empty, and there are still not enough MB? There are several options for freeing up additional memory, and we will look at each of them separately.

Clearing the cache (Dalvik cache, general and individual applications)

Any device that has access to the Internet has a cache - an intermediate buffer in memory that provides quick access to temporary files. This allows you not to load the entire page every time you access it, but to store part of the data in the system memory and retrieve it upon the first request. On the one hand, this is convenient, because... The site loads quickly, no matter how low the connection speed is. On the other hand, we have memory filled with unnecessary files and the system itself slows down. Therefore, even if you have not yet encountered the error discussed in the article, you should clear the cache on Android at least once a month. By the way, you can do this in three ways:

• Delete all cache stored on the phone

To do this, go to “Settings”, open the “Memory” section and look for the “Cache” item in it. Click on it and agree to delete. A couple of seconds, and treasured megabytes were freed up on our phone.

• Delete a specific application's cache

If you are only missing a few MB, it is not necessary to erase all temporary files. Sometimes it is quite possible to get by with the cache of some resource-intensive program. To do this, you just need to open the “Settings” menu, select “Application” and find the application you are interested in in the list provided. Open it and look for the “Clear cache” button. Click on it and watch how the amount of free memory increases by the treasured megabytes.

• Erase Dalvik cache by putting the device in Recovery mode

Dalvik cache is a temporary compilation of application code that is stored as executable files. Removing them does not cause any harm to the performance of the gadget. Therefore, to free up a few extra MB in this way, do the following:

• Turn off the phone.
• We launch it in Recovery mode (the combination of buttons will be different for different devices, you can find it out from the instructions or on the manufacturer’s official website).
• In the menu that appears, first select the Wipe cache partition item, and then alternately Advanced Options and Wipe Dalvik Cache.
• After the unnecessary files are deleted, turn off the phone and restart it in normal mode.

Pay attention! In Recovery mode, the touch display is disabled, the menu is navigated using the volume buttons, and selection is made using the start button.

However, you need to understand that by deleting the cache, you do not get rid of it forever. Temporary files will be placed again in the device’s memory as soon as you visit the website or open the application.

Removing unnecessary data from the “Downloads” and “Other” sections

Files downloaded from the Internet, as well as data that the system cannot assign to any of the prescribed categories, also take up a lot of space. You can get rid of them in different ways. If you know which folder or folders the download is being made into, open them and clean them manually. If not, use the following scheme:

If you are afraid to delete something you need, but you cannot identify the file by its name, click on it and it will open for viewing.

Cleaning using utilities

If you don’t want to deal with your phone’s settings, you can clear the cache much faster. Special applications will help you with this, any of which can be downloaded from the Play Market. To start scanning the system, click the start button. The system will analyze all the files stored on the phone and find among them temporary and no longer needed. Then click on “Clean” or “Delete” and get rid of the garbage on your gadget.

The most popular cleaning applications are:

• Clean Master is one of the most popular memory cleaning and virus protection applications. It has extensive functionality and allows you to free up not only regular memory, but also RAM.
• CCleaner quickly finds outdated and residual files, allows you to delete several applications at a time, quickly stops running tasks, and also puts background programs into hibernation mode in 1 click.
• NoxCleaner. The program is interesting because it independently removes any third-party applications that have not been used for more than a month, and itself weighs extremely little (8 MB, version 1.2.5).

Also in the Play Market there are various “Application Managers” that help manage programs (install, delete, move, etc.) on the phone. However, for full functionality, many of them require root rights, which can negatively affect the security of the gadget.

Uninstalling apps

The lion's share of the phone's internal memory is occupied by third-party applications and games. Therefore, if you are thinking about cleaning your device, start with them. As a rule, users erase programs that have become unnecessary using a simplified scheme: they press and hold the icon on the work screen or in the general menu, and then drag it to the trash. Or open the application page in the Play Market and click the “Delete” button. However, the cache and some entries after such deletion may remain in the device’s memory, settling there as dead weight. Therefore, if you want to erase an application without a trace, we suggest using the following method:

Done, neither the application itself nor the files related to it are anymore on the device. Your account information is stored in your Google cloud profile, so if you want to reinstall the game, your progress will not be lost.

Transferring applications to external memory

If you don’t have enough free MB and don’t want to delete applications, you can try moving them to an external drive. Let’s say right away that this option does not work for all firmware and not for all programs. However, why not give it a try. To transfer:

If there is no such button, it means that the developer intentionally prohibited installation anywhere other than internal memory. And you can free up space by transferring only if the user has root rights.

Manual cleaning with root rights

We consider it necessary to start the conversation about this method with a warning:

If something goes wrong during the installation process (download an application infected with viruses, make a mistake, etc.), then there is a risk of getting “ ” instead of a phone. And the service warranty does not apply to devices with superuser rights. Therefore, you perform further actions at your own peril and risk.

To get root rights, select from the list below the application that is suitable for your phone model and install it:

• 360 Root.
• Baidu Root.
• DingDong Root.
• Romaster SU.
• Root Dashi.
• Root Genius.
• Root Zhushou.

Run the program, after which you can delete through it (or by regular deletion described above) system applications, files from the data folder and other components that are prohibited from erasing.