A few years ago, the televisions that we had at home were computers that simply served us to tune in to local channels and see the content that they offered us. Fortunately, this has evolved so much that our screens have become an extension of a smartphone, being able to install apps, games or connect to the internet on them. What is the problem? Well, as happens in the phone, this device can run out of internal memory to house this type of content. Today we explain how to expand the storage space of your Smart TV .
How to know the available space on your Smart TV
The first, and perhaps the most important thing, is to know what the internal memory of this device is and, therefore, how much of it is available to store more apps or content.
Depending on the operating system your smart TV has, the path to get to this information may vary. We are going to explain it for those teams with Android TV . But don’t worry, the process will be extremely on any other TV and system.
To get to know what the internal storage is, you must perform the following steps:
- Enter the system settings of your Smart TV. These are usually represented by the icon of a gear that you can find in the start menu of your TV.
- From here, you start down through the different options until you find one called “Storage and Restoration.” Click on it to access.
- In this menu we will see a summary of the different storage available for our television. The section that interests us is the one called “Shared internal storage”. Click on it to consult this information.
Once inside this section, we will have access not only to know what is the internal space that our television has to house information, but we will also be able to know how much of it is available. In addition, when displaying this menu we will see the information in more detail, categorizing the storage occupied by file types: photos, videos, applications, music, etc.
Internal expansion: goodbye to unnecessary
Now that we know how to check the internal memory of our smart TV, we have to learn to manage it intelligently and say goodbye to all those files that we no longer need.
Each application, game or content that you download from this computer will occupy a space in this internal memory. Therefore, if we devote ourselves to compulsively downloading all kinds of files, this will end up taking its toll. Also, as we fill up the internal memory of this, the computer will begin to slow down. So, as you can imagine, this space is worth maintaining efficiently.
How to uninstall apps on a Smart TV
The first thing you can do is uninstall applications and games that you no longer use . You can do this in two different ways:
- From your home screen , press the “Apps” button on the television controller. Once here, locate the app you want to delete and hold down the central button of the remote control’s scroll cross for several seconds. A menu will automatically appear in which you will see the “Information” option that you must access. Once here, select “Uninstall” to make this app disappear from your Smart TV.
- From the system settings , locate the “Applications” menu and click on it to enter. Here is a list of all the apps installed on your smart TV. Now you just have to locate the one you want to delete, press to access the advanced options and click on “Uninstall”. This method is the most useful and fastest if you want to delete several apps in one go.
Clear junk files and cache
Another option we have to increase the available memory space within our smart TV is to delete downloaded files and the cache of our apps. Both things can be done in a super simple way:
So that we all understand it easily, the cache is what our applications generate to work quickly. So is deleting it bad? Not at all. Sometimes certain apps end up accumulating “excessive” cache space. Therefore, although at first it may seem that the operation of this is somewhat slower, our team will end up thanking us for cleaning this memory every so often. To delete it, we will have to do the following process for each app that we have installed:
- Access the settings menu of your Smart TV.
- Locate the “Applications” menu in this list and access it.
- Click on any app and, within the options, you will find “Clear Cache”. Click on this option to run the cleaning .
On the other hand, we have those files downloaded either from the browser or through any of the apps installed on the system. These end up stored inside the internal memory and occupying a space that, little by little, ends up saturating it. Deleting these types of files is somewhat more complex but not at all impossible. Our recommendation is that you install a file explorer to be able to access the different sectors of the internal storage. These are the steps to take to delete, for example, an item that is stored within the downloads folder of the Smart TV:
- Go to your TV’s app store and download a file browser. We have tried several and the one that best fulfills its function is File Comander .
- Once downloaded and installed, access this app and, once here, you will have access to all the system folders.
- Go into “Downloads” and, now, you just have to select those elements that you want to delete and then click on the trash can icon to do so.
How to increase memory on a Smart TV
However, if even doing everything explained above you still need extra space in the memory of your TV, you can expand this capacity through a USB memory. The Smart TV will detect it as “internal memory” and you can store all kinds of files here without problems.
The type of USB you want to use is not something limiting or strict. You can choose any type of memory regardless of space or speed. But, yes, remember that this will behave like internal memory so, the higher its quality, the better its performance.
Something that we do want to tell you before you carry out the expansion process is that, in our case, we have not tested with external memories of more than 32 GB. Therefore, we cannot confirm for sure that, if you do this with a hard drive with a lot of storage, whether or not it will be effective in your case. On the other hand, remember that during the process a restoration of this USB memory will be carried out, so all the data that is in it will be erased .
The steps to follow to expand the internal memory of your Smart TV from a USB are:
- Connect the external storage to one of the USB connectors on your TV.
- Enter the system settings and, here, locate the “Storage and Restore” menu. Click on it to access.
- In this menu go to the “Removable Storage” section and open the external memory you connected.
- Here you just have to click on the option “Delete and format as device storage” and, in the next menu, select “Format”.
After a few minutes of waiting, depending on the power of your TV and the connected storage, the USB will have been formatted and will now be part of the internal memory of your Smart TV. Now you can go to both the Apps section and the downloaded files and move them to this new storage .
