Forum Discussion
Free up space in crossdevice mobile phone folder
I like the idea of having my connected mobile device storeg folder accessible from my PC.
It is a very similar concept to OneDrive where you can see the contents/thumbnails of the cloud folders and files, without it actually taking up space on local hard drive. And you can access those when online, by downloading/storing it locally first.
In OneDrive you can free up space by right clicking on the files/folders and free up disk space.
However, I don't see this option for the phone storage files and folders. Why? Isn't there any?
How do I free up local disk space once I don't need to have files/folders stored locally anymore in phone storage? I don't see any option for it by right clicking.
Is there another way?
Sure, I can delete it, but then it gets deleted both locally and on the phone ... and I just want to free up space on local drive, sort of de-synchronize it.
How?
2 Replies
De-synchronizing or freeing space isn't natively supported for phone storage in Windows, because it's simply a file transfer interface, not a cloud sync service.
There's no right-click "free up space" for Phone Link like OneDrive has. OneDrive uses the Windows Cloud Files API which gives you those placeholder icons and the context menu option. Phone Link was never wired into it, so there's no per-file dehydration.
The cache actually lives here:
C:\Users\<you>\CrossDevice\<phonename>\
That's what's eating your disk. To clear it safely:
- Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Mobile devices > Manage devices
- Turn OFF "Show mobile device in File Explorer" first. If you skip this, deleting from the cache can wipe files from the phone too.
- Delete the contents of that CrossDevice folder.
- Toggle it back on if you still want the feature. Cache rebuilds only for stuff you browse.
That's the closest thing to a "free up space" action that exists.
