Android users are bombarded with several cleaner apps these days. Many of them claim to speed up processing speed and increase responsiveness of mobile phones. Let us see if claims made by these apps are true or they are just superficial.
Claim 1: Memory cleaning: Many cleaner apps claim to free up memory space by killing background apps and speed up phone speed. These apps were relevant for mobile phones few years back but Android has incorporated in-built advanced application life-cycle manager as years passed on. This in-built application life-cycle manager process kills background apps if memory space needed to be freed for running a foreground app. This process is automatic and does not need user's intervention. So basically we do not need a separate app now to free up memory space.
Claim 2: Clean junk files: Many cleaner apps claim to free up storage space by cleaning up junk files from storage. These apps delete temporary files and cache of websites from browser, delete cached data from Facebook, YouTube and other apps.
This is useful only if some files which are no longer needed are deleted, e.g. temporary files of a website loaded by browser are deleted by app and we will not visit this website again in near future, in this case it will not harm to delete these files and it will free up some storage space.
If cleaner apps delete cache of Facebook app then if user opens Facebook app again, Facebook app downloads huge data again and cache it. This results in consumption of huge internet data again which would have not happened if cleaner app had not deleted Facebook cache. If user opens cleaner app again after using Facebook then it shows Facebook cache as junk again and deletes if user selects it, this is basically a stupid process which deletes required cache from mobile phone.
Same applied to YouTube and other app cache. Same applied to thumbnails of photo album. Cleaner app keeps deleting it but Android will recreate it as soon as user opens photo album. Deleting photo album thumbnail cache is unnecessary thing done by cleaner apps.
Claim 3: Clean Ad Files and empty folders: This is also an unnecessary task as Ad Files are downloaded when user opens an ad-supported app. Empty folders are also created on mobile storage by various apps and they are created for a purpose. Cleaner keeps deleting these files and folders but they are created again the moment user launches corresponding apps again.
In conclusion: Cleaner apps are not needed to be run daily or weekly as they may delete cache and folders which are needed during day to day working of other apps.
Then when to run a Cleaner app?
- Photo thumbnail files are left behind in mobile when user takes backup of photo album to external storage and delete image files from mobile. Cleaner app can clean these unnecessary thumbnails to free up some space.
- When user uninstall any app then running Cleaner app can delete app remnant such as Ad files, empty folders and cache if any.
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