Tidy up again: How to bring order to digital devices

Clean up again
How to organize your digital devices

It’s worth tidying up your laptop and smartphone from time to time.

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With spring cleaning, many people bring their homes back into shape. But computers and smartphones are often forgotten.

When spring cleaning, many people clear out their closets and homes. But consumers should also keep their PCs, laptops, Macs, tablets and smartphones in order from time to time. With these tips, users can also clean up in the digital area.

Order brings storage space

For many users, one of the biggest problems is lack of storage space for content such as photos, videos and games. This is often due to the fact that many things were previously saved that may no longer be needed.

Apps, programs and games are big memory guzzlers. Why not clean up the library of installed games on the PC or look through the apps on the smartphone again. The question arises whether you even need a certain program if a user hasn’t touched it for months. And should it be needed again at a later date, consumers can also download and install it again.

One of the worst memory guzzlers on the smartphone for many users are photos and video clips. Users can store memories in cloud storage services such as Apple’s iCloud, Google Drive or Microsoft’s OneDrive. A backup on a PC or laptop, which should be carried out regularly anyway so that no important files are lost, is also a good idea. Then users can keep only the best shots on the device and delete the others. So that the photos and videos do not take up space on the computer, users simply move the files to a USB stick or an external hard drive. There are also tools that can be used to find duplicate files that are taking up space unnecessarily.

all gone?

The same applies to downloaded songs, films or series in apps from streaming providers such as Netflix or Spotify. If you haven’t listened to or looked at a piece of content for a long time, you can also delete it. Here, too, users can download the whole thing again later if they feel like it again.

Formatting a hard drive or partition is a clear cut for users. After that, all the content really disappeared. Important files should therefore be saved elsewhere beforehand. To be on the safe side, inexperienced users should seek the help of a more experienced user.

If new data is saved on a computer, it can happen that data blocks that belong together are saved in different places on the hard disk. After a while, this can lead to the device becoming noticeably lame. The so-called defragmentation can help here. The data distributed on a hard disk is rearranged and pushed together.

Cookies and updates

Over time, internet users collect large amounts of data via cookies and in the so-called cache, which they should regularly delete for data protection reasons. Functions for emptying the cache or deleting cookies can usually be found in the browser settings – usually under a sub-item such as “Privacy and security”.

If you already invest time in cleaning up anyway, you can also update the system right away. Developers not only eliminate errors with updates, but also repeatedly close possible points of attack in programs or operating systems. Users should be active here at regular intervals, because these updates sometimes have to be confirmed manually and are not always installed automatically.

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