Clear cache memory

How to empty the cache memory in one go and thus clean the RAM memory?

Hi and welcome to the forum.

I think as the RAM is volatile then restarting the phone will do that, but there is cache in the SSD main memory.

Hi Xavier,

what do you expect to improve/benefit from when you “clean” the RAM?

Not knowing what it is you want to achieve I’d say nobody should waste any of their precious lifetime worrying about RAM management of their smartphone. Unless you have a concrete problem that might be related to RAM issues.

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By the way, what is your RAM usage?
Currently mine states
Avg 2.3GB of 3.8GB memory used

Sorry.
I may not be expressing myself clearly enough. Being French-speaking, I do a google translation. In fact before my Fairphone 4, I used a Samsung where there was the possibility to clean the cache memory in the settings.
On my Fairphone, when I go to settings/storage/Other apps/
By clicking on an application, there is the possibility of “clearing the cache”.
My question: wouldn’t there be a way to “clear the cache” of all applications at the same time with one click.
Concerning the RAM, in fact I use the “Avast” application and I click on “increase the RAM”.
I can’t find the option in the Fairphone settings to see the amount of RAM used.
Thanks in advance.

Thanks. How do you get this information? Which option in settings?

Yes I only have the option to delete the cache for each item, which is advised for an app if that app is playing up. Though I do occasionally do it for some apps anyway.

To see the RAM used

Tap on Settings > About phone > Build number 7 to 10 times in quick succesion. This enables Developer Options

Next Settings > System > Advanced > Developer options You should see the RAM usage as the top bit of info. [Memory]

All the best

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Thank you very much for all these clear explanations.
All the best.

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Answer is at the bottom of this post.

I feel like you are mixing up a couple of different concepts here. RAM is actual Hardware, while Cache is way to use this hardware. This post simplifies a bit, but I hope it is still easy enough to understand the concepts.

Let’s start with Cache.
Every Android App has its own Cache. (I don’t use Spotify, so I actually don’t know if that is how it works, but it looks like a good example…) Assume you are using Spotify and you are mostly listening to the same songs while on the go. In a world without cache that would mean downloading (streaming) the very same data every time you want to listen to the song. This consumes battery life, increases the amount of data used and possibly stops playback if you are in an area without data coverage. Since the song itself does not change if you listen to it for a second/third/fourth … time your phone might as well download it only once and store it for future use. This allows you to listen to the song over and over without having to use data to download it every time.

This is what cache does, storing data that the App assumes is going to be used again, for future use. Use cases are not limited to downloaded data from the internet, an app could also cache (=save) results from difficult calculations that it assumes will be needed again.

If you delete the cache of an app said app will just recreate the cache the next time it is running and wants to access a file that is now no longer in the cache. Deleting the cache is only ever useful if your cache becomes outdated - for example your browser cached an image from a website, but the author changed the image because the old one had a typo - in this case it could happen that you are seeing an old version of this image.
A good cache has checks in place that this won’t be too big of an issue (i.e. deleting cached images that are older than 5 minutes).

If an app ever misbehaves it might be a good idea to clean its cache, but cleaning the cache of all apps with one button press? I cannot think of a good reason to use this kind kind of feature. Deleting cache doesn’t have any benefits except freeing some storage, of which a FP4 should have plenty.

Cache does not store important data that you don’t want to lose. Cache is only used to accelerate the user experience and access to data. Apps can store important data in App Data.

You are basically having increased storage used on your phone, which decreases the amount of data you have to use (this is a common concept in computer science, increasing the usage of one resource to decrease the use of another, usually more limited, resource).

RAM
You might have noticed, that I did not use the term RAM in the section above, or any other reference to actual hardware storage. (At least I hope I did not). That is because it does not matter too much.
RAM contains data that you are currently using and data that Android thinks you will be using in the near future. YouTube might have cached 2 GB of video data, but since you are not using YouTube right now, there is no reason to store this video data in RAM, so it is just sitting on your internal memory. But since you are using Spotify on a regular basis and you have enough free RAM Android might keep the Spotify Cache in RAM.

Since RAM is volatile memory (meaning it is cleared every reboot) cache is also always stored on your internal memory, which leads us back to your original question, how to clear RAM. Answer: Reboot your phone. (Don’t though).

To answer your original questions:
How to clear cache for all apps: You don’t. You clear the cache of an app only if it misbehaves, displays outdated information or similar.

How to clear RAM: You don’t. Unused RAM is wasted RAM.
If Android ever runs out of free RAM it will empty RAM itself until it has enough free RAM for what it needs. Android itself caches everything you can think of and more.
You can have 4GB of completely free RAM - or you can have 4GB of RAM that is used for caching, but if you ever need it for something else you gain instant access to it.

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And while I’m at it, using an anti virus application on Android phones is only rarely useful. The only reasons I can think of right now is if you
a) Install apks from outside the google play store on a regular basis
b) Send/forward mails with untrusted attachments

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And to add, free versions of such Apps come with a bunch of tracker included, i.e. one thinks the APP protects the data and at the same time is at least able to spy data.

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Thank you very much for all these clear explanations.
All the best.

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Probably not with an up-to-date FP4, but with my FP2 (currently still on Android 9, and also avoiding factory reset so far), I miss this feature!
Apps stopping/closing is not uncommon, and it would be convenient to be able to clear all caches in one go.
It used to be possible, under earlier FP OSs.

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It’s not available on A11 on my FP3s and I’m pretty sure it’s not on the FP4 but I can see the attraction of such. Maybe a request for such a feature can be sent to Fairphone :slight_smile:

The App Android Assistent makes this and Others very Well.

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Welcome to the forum.

I’ll ask my daughter to check that out as I only have an FP4 A11 and have deg-oggled it when I first received it, so if I remember correctly Android Assistant was one of the obvious to remove.

All the best.

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