The Essential Guide on How To Free Up Firestick / Fire TV Disk Space in 3 Easy Steps

My Firestick was running dangerously low on disk space until I did these easy Firestick / Fire TV disk space fixes.

I started off with a measly 2.0 GB of free disk space on my Firestick.  But ideally, this should be at least 4GB for my purposes: using the Firestick as a downloader box.

After you clear disk space on your Firestick, you usually see an immediate performance increase (much smoother menu navigation, faster app launches, etc).

• Related tutorials for Fire TV & Firestick:  6 Ways to Unfreeze Firestick and Install a VPN to boost the performance of all apps

There are tons of great reasons for increasing the amount of free disk space on your Firestick. First I’ll show you how to check your free space as you free up Fire TV disk space. After that, I’ll show you the three easy steps to free up more space.

Now that I finished the steps below, my Firestick has 5GB of free space (up from 2GB!). Use the step-by-step guide below to maximize the amount of Fire TV disk space you have available.

First things first…

Why Do I Need to Free Up Some Disk Space? 

If you’re a new or existing FireStick user, you might want to know the reasons why it’s always important to monitor your disk space. You should always be keeping tabs on this, as disk space is super important in the downloading process. Without any disk space, you wouldn’t be able to install all the apps you want to stream content from!

So, what is disk space? On your FireStick, you have about 8 GB of free disk space upon purchase. Over time, as you install more and more of your favorite streaming apps, your space will naturally decrease. Each app you install onto your FireStick will take up a certain amount of those GBs. Some apps take more than others, and you’ll usually be able to see how much before you download them.

If you’re running low on disk space, you’ll receive a message on your FireStick, telling you that your disk space is running “critically low.” If you see this message, you’ll need to take action almost immediately if you want to continue installing new apps from time to time. 

One important thing to note is that, yes, you’ll receive a warning message before your storage runs out, but you really don’t want to wait until then. You should monitor your disk space well in advance so you can avoid any performance issues down the line. Disk space is precious, and you should check it each month to make sure it’s not running low. 

As you can see, it’s very important to free up space on your FireStick. If you don’t, you might not be able to download the apps you really want or even updates on existing apps you have! So, we hope that our explanations in this article help you figure out ways to clear that up.

How to Check Firestick / Fire TV Disk Space (2 Methods)

As you run through the How-To guide below this section, use these steps to check your Firestick disk space as you’re clearing it out. This way you can see how you’re doing at each step of the process.

First I show you how to check your Firestick disk space from the “Settings” area of your Firestick.  Here’s how:

Check Firestick Disk Space Method 1 (via Firestick “Settings” Area)

1. From the Fire TV home screen, go to Settings
   

Then select Device

Now select About

Then press the Down button on the Fire TV remote to select Storage

On your screen, the Firestick’s Internal Space is displayed.  

Check Firestick Disk Space Method 2 (via “DiskUsage” App)

Instead of using the Firestick “Settings” area to check Fire TV disk space, it’s much better to use the DiskUsage app for Firestick.

The DiskUsage app is self-explanatory:  it scans your Firestick memory and shows you visually what’s taking up space (and how much Fire TV disk space!), like this:

So get the DiskUsage APK in no-time-flat by following these steps:

1. Install the Downloader app on Firestick (by holding down the Voice button and saying “Downloader”)
2. Then enter the following address into Downloader:  tvcola.com/duapk
3. Press Install
4. Then press Open

That’s it!  Now just USE the DiskUsage app by selecting folders and viewing files.

To delete files, use the ES File Explorer Pro app for Firestick. You’ll free up tons of Fire TV disk space this way

Important: Firestick Security Note

Let’s say you’ve freed up enough Fire TV disk space to get free streaming content from a great 3rd party app. Or even if you’re interested in getting free, region-blocked content on Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube that is currently being kept from you!

Paid subscription streaming sites will block certain content depending on where you are. Downloading a VPN like IPVanish will allow you to trick streaming services into thinking that you’re streaming from different regions, thus unlocking region-blocked content! If you’re paying for a service, we think you should get everything that the service offers.

In fact, there are tons of great benefits of using a VPN that a lot of users don’t know about. If this sounds like it would improve your streaming experience (and it’s definitely improved ours), use our link to get our reader discount on the best, most reliable VPN available.

If you need a little help installing a VPN in your Firestick, we’ve got just the thing. Our guide will walk you through how to install a VPN on any device. It’s one of the best things you can do for your online safety and security.

How Much Storage Space Does Firestick Have?

Technically speaking, Firestick has 8GB of Fire TV disk space.

Although the Fire TV Operating System (and system apps) consume over 2GB of that Fire TV disk space.

So effectively, Amazon Firestick has 5.57GB of Available storage space.

Why Does My Firestick Constantly Popping Critically Low Storage?

A particularly low storage warning will be shown if your Fire Stick doesn’t even have enough available storage space to sustain normal functioning. If you install an app when your Fire Stick is short on storage, you will receive an error message. In both circumstances, the best solution is to clear some storage space.

In certain circumstances, even after clearing the device cache, removing superfluous data, and deleting unwanted applications, the dangerously low storage alert will continue. When this occurs, rebooting the Fire Stick generally resolves the issue.

How Do I Know When My Firestick / FireTV Disk Usage Low?

Once there’s less than 500MB of available storage space, the Fire TV OS warns you and tries to get you to clear Fire TV disk space. At this time, the Firestick usually starts to bog down and perform like a snail.

What next?

Now that we know how to check our Firestick / Fire TV disk space usage, we start the “cleaning” process. Since we checked our free Fire TV disk space with the steps above, now we know exactly how much free space we currently have. At this point, simply follow the steps below to clear out as much free Fire TV disk space on your Firestick or Fire TV as possible!

How to Free Up Firestick Disk Space

The steps below brought my Fire TV stick from 2GB of free space to 5GB of free disk space.

Part A: Install and Run Firestick Cleaner Apps

Install the Firestick disk space cleaner apps below to quickly free up space!

Firestick Cleaner App #1:  SD Maid Pro

Install the famous SD Maid Pro app to clear up free space on your Fire TV Stick.

How to Install SD Maid Pro on Firestick

The SD Maid Pro app is free and widely available from many places online where you can download APKs.

Here are 3 ways to install SD Maid Pro on Firestick or any Android device:

Method 1:  You can use the Firestick app store TVCola to install SD Maid Pro for Firestick.

Method 2:  Or you can install FileLinked for Firestick, then use my Filelinked code 66575558 to install SDMaidPro on Firestick.

Method 3:  The easiest way to install SDMaidPro on Firestick is to use the Downloader app.  Here’s how:

1. Install Downloader on Firestick by holding down the voice button and saying “Downloader”
2. Open the Downloader app and enter the address tvcola.com/sdmaidapk

How to USE SD Maid Pro to Free Up Firestick Disk Space

After you Open the SD Maid Pro app, use the System Cleaner feature to do your first round of Fire TV Disk space cleaning.

Then use the “Uninstaller” part of SD Maid Pro to remove apps you know you don’t use.

Last but not least, check the “Biggest” area in SDMaid Pro’s disk space analyzer to see what’s taking up Fire Stick disk space.

Now that we’ve cleared up some disk space AND RAM, let’s move on to the next app that will free up space for us:  CleanMaster.

Firestick Cleaner App #2:  Clean Master for Firestick

The free Clean Master app for Firestick and Fire TV cleans the device’s Memory, Cache, Residual files, and leftover APK files.

When I ran Clean Master on my Firestick, it gave me 750MB of extra Firestick disk space!

Result: Clean Master brought my Firestick up from 2.0GB of free space to 2.75GB of free Fire TV disk space.

To install Clean Master for Firestick, we have at least 2 methods:

Method 1:  Install Clean Master for Firestick by entering my Filelinked code into Filelinked (my Filelinked code is 66575558).

Method 2:  Use Downloader for Firestick to install CleanMaster (see the easy steps below!)

How to Install Clean Master for Firestick

1. First, install the Downloader app for Firestick.
2. Then enter the address tvcola.com/cmapk
3. Press Install
4. Then press Open

You’re done!  Now just use Clean Master for the Fire TV stick to clear up Fire TV disk space.

How to USE Clean Master for Firestick

To use CleanMaster, just Open CleanMaster (aka “CMLite”) and let the app run its initial Scan on your Firestick.

Then press BOOST to free up space!

Here’s what this app cleans up on your Amazon Fire TV / Stick:

• Fragments of files and apps that reside on your disk drive
• Temp (aka “temporary”) files and junk files / leftover stuff
• Unnecessary apps (aka “corpses”)

Then continue to Part B below to uninstall apps on Fire TV.

Part B: Uninstall Apps You’re Not Using

UPDATE:  To see which apps are taking up the most disk space on your Firestick, use the “Uninstaller” app found in my FileLinked code.  My FileLinked code is 66575558.  After you install FileLinked on Firestick and enter my Filelinked code, just go down to the “Uninstaller” app and install that.

• Generally speaking, “large” apps for Firestick consume over 50MB or so.
• In contrast, “smaller” apps run under 50MB or so (for now!).

For example, the Facebook app for Firestick pretty much always uses over 50MB.  This is because the Facebook app requires that much data to operate.

• So consider this when you install an app: is the space the app consumes worth the enjoyment I get out of the app?

It’s also important to know that some apps are total memory / Fire TV disk space hogs!

An example of this is the Kodi app for Firestick.

Even without add-ons installed in Kodi, the base Kodi app is at least 80MB or so.

Uninstall Kodi and Clear Data

On my Firestick, the biggest memory-hogging app was Kodi. Since I’m using my particular Firestick as a downloader box, I won’t need Kodi.

So I uninstall Kodi, which gives me 800MB more of free space on my Fire TV Stick. Lodi is another app I had installed, so I uninstalled that (600MB).

I also uninstalled RetroArch (100MB), Show Box (80MB), Tablo (90MB), and some “Free IPTV” app I tried out (50MB).

Result: After removing all these apps, I now have 4.49GB of free space, out of a total 5.57 available space.  We’re doing better!

My ultimate goal is to have around 5GB of free space so I can download a 4GB file to my Firestick and still leave enough room for the Fire TV OS to operate.

I ran Clean Master once more, but it didn’t give me any more free Fire TV disk space at this point.

Part C: Use the EASY UNINSTALLER App to See & Remove Largest Apps

At this point, I still had a handful of apps that were taking up around 50MB each.

So I removed these apps and checked my Firestick free disk space again: 4.73GB of free space!

I’m almost to my 5.0GB goal. To free up that last 270MB of free space, I removed nearly the last of my non-system Firestick apps.

Finally, I’m up to 4.84GB of Firestick free Fire TV disk space. I left a few third-party apps installed (like Aptoide TV) for now, since I’ll be using them in a few minutes to install Terrarium TV. Terrarium TV is my current app of choice for downloading movies & TV shows (only Public Domain ones, of course!).

But if I removed Aptoide TV and the last of my non-system Fire TV stick apps, I would gain an additional 130MB or so.

This would put my just under the 5.0GB free Fire TV disk space mark, landing me approximately at 4.97GB free disk space.

Result: I consider this a win because 4.97GB is definitely enough to download a full HD movie file.

How to Install Easy Uninstaller for Firestick

My favorite uninstaller app for Firestick (yes – there are many) is called Easy Uninstaller.

Why is Easy Uninstaller the best uninstaller for Firestick?  Because it lists installed apps in order of SIZE.  This means the Firestick apps that take the most space will appear at the TOP of the list (after you sort the list that way).

1. Install Downloader for Firestick
2. Then enter the address tvcola.com/unapk
3. Press Install
4. Then press Open

Now just use the Easy Uninstaller app to sort the apps by size and remove the biggest ones.

How to Use Easy Uninstaller to Free Up Firestick Disk Space

1. Press the button in the bottom left corner of the Easy Uninstaller for Firestick to sort installed apps by file size.
   

Then select “Size by Descending“.  This causes the biggest Firestick apps (by size) to appear at the top of the Uninstall list.

Now check the boxes next to the apps you want to uninstall

Finally, press the UNINSTALL button at the bottom of the app to uninstall the checked apps.

If you’re using Firestick as a downloader device:  After I download my movie file, I can then easily transfer the large movie file to my 4 Terabyte external hard drive to immediately re-gain the free space on my Firestick (back to around 4.97GB to make room for another movie download!).

Clear App Data and Cache

The first method to free up disk space on your FireStick that we’ll cover is clearing your FireStick’s cache. Basically, a cache is related to processing memory on your device, meaning that some files and data are stored in the cache for faster loading in some cases.

Clearing the cache for every application you have loaded is the simplest approach to free up some space on a Fire Stick. When you use applications on your Fire Stick, they save data in a cache file on the device. This might save up a lot of space if you have a lot of applications.

However, if this cache becomes overloaded, you’ll soon run into performance issues on your FireStick. If you have too much stuff stored in any memory host, it will clog up your processing and cause delays in streaming your content. 

So, if you’re experiencing performance issues and you haven’t checked your cache in a while, we recommend you do this before any of the other methods!

Steps For Clearing Cache or App Data

You might be asking yourself, “How do I delete caches on my Fire Stick TV?” We’re going to walk you through the process. It’s easy! Here are the steps:

1. Go to your FireStick’s Home screen using the remote. 
2. Navigate to the Settings tab.
3. Find the “Applications” tab, and click on “Manage Installed Applications.”
4. To clear a specific app’s cache, find it on the list and select it. 
5. From here, click on “Clear cache.” 

That’s how to clear the cache for individual apps—you can repeat steps 4 and 5 for as many apps as you want! This way, if you know which apps are consuming the most memory (and therefore disk space), you can just clear them periodically. Once you do this, your apps should run so much more smoothly!

We hope that this has solved your problems. If not, let us know!

Factory Reset

If other methods have not worked, you can try this method: Factory Reset. Of course, you’ll want this to be one of your last resorts, but it’s usually a simple way to reset some settings that might be causing you problems. 

If you reset your Fire TV Stick, it reverts to the form it was in when you first unpacked it. Resetting the Fire TV Stick will erase all programs and data that are using up storage space on the device. Whereas this can free storage space on your Fire TV Stick, you should be aware that doing so will erase any personal information, disconnect your Amazon account, and require you to set up the device from start.

There are currently two methods to factory reset your FireStick. Grab your FireStick remote and read on for the detailed explanations and steps to follow.

Factory Reset FireStick with Remote

If you want to factory restart your FireStick with your remote, there’s a super-easy way to do it. This method only involves one step, but read carefully. 

To factory reset with the FireStick remote, first, locate the Play/Pause button and the Select button. Now, hold down both of these buttons at the same time for at least 5 seconds. Release and the device will reset

Many Fire TV Stick errors can be resolved by resetting to factory defaults. But, it is recommended that you only execute a factory reset to free up storage space after all other options have failed.

If the problem remains after a factory reset, storage on your Fire Stick may be corrupted or damaged.

Factory Reset FireStick in Settings

Here’s how to reset your device in Settings:

1. Go to Home, then Settings on your FireStick.
2. Find “My Fire TV.” Select it. 
3. Select “Reset to Factory Defaults.”

Part D (Optional): Jailbreak Firestick

Yes, you can install the awesome TVCola app store for Firestick and use it to download apps for Firestick.

Why?

Since we cleared up some free Fire TV disk space on your Firestick, you should now have enough room to install some great apps! Start downloading now!

So visit TVCola.com to install the TVCola app on your Fire TV Stick.

Kodi Pairing Issue After Fire TV Disk Space Clearing

If you use Kodi after clearing out the Fire TV disk space on your Firestick / Fire TV and Kodi still says “Pairing” when you go to stream a movie, then try this Kodi pairing fix.

The information below (about Terrarium TV) is out of date and used for historical reference.  Instead of using Terrarium TV, use TVCola.

The Terrarium TV app is essentially an all-in-one media app that not only lets you stream movies, but also download them.

We know you would only use Terrarium TV to download Public Domain movies, which are free to download. But just in case “third parties” mistake the downloaded movie for copyrighted material, you should use a VPN to hide your identity from all third parties while downloading.

If you’re using a FireStick and you want to browse anonymously, we can help you: use a VPN! Using a VPN can also help with disk space since none of your browsing activity can be stored while you use one. 

So, what’s a VPN? A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is the best way to protect yourself while you use any online services, including your FireStick apps. What it basically does is prevent any of your browsing data from being traced back to your IP. This is because it secures a different internet connection to another private network, thereby diverting your data logs. 

If you want to download a VPN right onto your FireStick, you can look for one upright in the search bar.

For example, we love IPVanish. So type that into the search bar, download it, and you can start using it immediately while you stream on your FireStick!

I managed to get this excellent exclusive IPVanish discount for all my readers!

Click here to get started right away.

Wrap Up

So, we hope that the methods to free up disk space in this article have helped you out. We know it can be super annoying when you can’t download more channels or your streams start to get buggy. Luckily, freeing up disk space on FireSticks has solved this problem for many of our readers in the past. 

If the storage on your Fire TV Stick has dropped below the 500MB low storage limit, apply the procedures indicated above to free up space on the device.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about this article, don’t hesitate to let us know in the comment section below. Our team members would be happy to help you through any hiccups! 

Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you back here soon with our next article.