Digital spring cleaning: how to refresh your device to keep it safe and working

22 Apr. (Portaltic/EP) –

Review a periodic device is synonymous with security and peace of mind, not only because we are aware that all installed applications must be updated to work properly, but also because they take up storage space.

The more storage space used, lower performance will offer our mobile phone or our computer, since it will cost them more work to carry out daily operations due to the little margin they have to consume the remaining space.

While it is true that there are solutions to this problem, with ‘gadgets’ such as larger hard drives and more memory, as well as new motherboards and CPUs, there is also the possibility of making the so-called digital cleaning.

This basically consists of checking what are the applications and programs installed on our deviceshow much storage space they take up, if they are efficient and if the files we save are useful or can be deleted.

Checking the ‘software’ of the device is the first step we must take to find out which programs are installed and which are not used, such as pre-installed applications. Are take up storage spaceso it is convenient to delete them if they are not used.

In addition to removing these services, it is also recommended to disable all those that are only used occasionally. Thanks to this, we can prevent applications from running in the background, putting them in ‘deep sleep’ mode from the battery settings, as you remember from the cybersecurity company Eset.

Startup applications should also be reviewed in the event that we are carrying out digital cleaning on the computer, which are those that start automatically every time the system is turned on.

This is the case of applications such as Spotify, Skype or Apple Music, which run on a background and affect not only the boot process, but also to the general performance of the system. To proceed with this deactivation, you must access the Task Manager and click on the startup tab or review the Windows startup applications.

DELETING FILES

Deleting files is the easiest yet cumbersome way to gain storage space on a device. In this case, the ideal is always to start with the downloads folder, to delete those downloaded folders or files that have the greatest weight. Next, the recycle bin should be emptied.

Taking a look at the images and videos stored on the devices is the task that follows this one, since we tend to store images and videos that may not be of use to us at another time, such as blurry photos or videos.

In this sense, solutions such as the one proposed by Google with Drive or iCloud+ in Apple terminals can also be very useful to keep files that we want consult in the future or memories in case we need more storage space in the terminal.

After you’ve reduced the number of installed apps to the ones you use most often, stopped any services that open automatically, and deleted any files that aren’t useful or stored them on a removable drive or in the cloud, it’s time to update the remaining ‘software’.

It is essential to keep downloaded ‘apps’ up to date, since updates not only bring new featuresbut also integrate patches that can fix bugs or vulnerabilities that cybercriminals could exploit.