The applications of an Android smartphone, starting from the first time they are started, create a cache on the memory and a series of internal data. By opening, then, the Android settings and going to the Applications section to see All internet apps and downloaded, you can see the indication of the space occupied by these in the internal memory or SD card.
You will notice, in the list, that the size of almost all applications is much higher than expected and when they were downloaded.
For example, the Facebook and Google apps could be up to 200 MB in size while for apps like Google Play Services, Chrome, Google Maps, Youtube and many others.
By tapping on an app you can then tap on Memory to see a detail on how this figure relating to the size of memory occupied is formed, which includes the application and then the files in the Cache and the Data.
From here you can then press the keys to clear the cache and clear the data, and it is useful as well as interesting to understand what the difference is and what it means to clear Cache and Data .
1) Clear the Android cache
The cache is made up of files created by the application during its use, which however do not concern its operation.
For example, an app like Chrome caches images downloaded from the internet so you don't have to download them again when you visit a certain website the second time, while the Facebook app downloads photos of the people whose profile you peek at.
This operation allows the smartphone to save internet traffic unnecessarily.
To recover memory space in Android, one of the first tips is to clear the application cache.
There are no consequences to this action, except that the app opens the contents already seen more slowly than before, because it must download them from the internet.
Clearing the cache is also a useful action when the app seems out of sync or when it seems to have problems or even when it becomes slow.
Android also allows you to clear the application cache all at once .
To do this you have to go to Settings and then to Storage, tap on Cached data and press OK on the question if you want to empty the Android cache.
In some phones the menu may have a different name, for example Memory or Storage space .
As already seen, there are apps to clear all the Android cache to retrieve memory even faster and with more options to choose which apps you want to delete.
2) Erase Android App Data
While the cache includes files saved by the application during use, but which are not part of the app itself, data is instead fundamental.
The Data includes changes to settings and credentials including account passwords for accessing apps.
In the games, the Data includes the progress made and the saved games, in Google Translate the saved languages to work offline while in Google Maps the saved maps and so on.
By deleting an app's data, it is completely reset as if it had just been installed.
It is therefore a complete reset of the application.
If you delete the data of the App like Facebook, you must then repeat the login with the account and reconfigure the various customized options.
Clearing an app's data is useful when that app no longer works, gives errors, or quits on its own.
For example, when Google Play Store doesn't work or if there are errors with Google Play Services, the solution is to clear the data of these apps.
Note that App Data and Cache are always stored in the phone's internal memory so even if you can move apps to the SD card, you cannot also move Data and Cache without root the phone.
