How to use device maintenance in Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+?

Device maintenance in Galaxy S8 and S8+ makes it easy to clean up and optimize the phone: free storage, clean up memory, close background apps, check abnormal battery usage and scan malware.

You can do it with one tap.

This Galaxy S8 how-to guide explains to you what you can do with device maintenance, and how to use these features.

What is device maintenance in Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+?

Device maintenance in Galaxy S8 and S8+ is not a new feature.

In Galaxy S6, Samsung introduced controversial smart manager. In Galaxy S7, Samsung corrected the mistakes in smart manager and rebranded it as device maintenance.

In Galaxy S8,  new features were added and old features were further polished.

Most Galaxy S8 owners use device maintenance to clean up the phone.

But device maintenance in Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ can do more.  Some commonly used features include:

• You can optimize (clean up) the phone with one tap.
• You can check battery usage.
• You can enable and customize battery saving modes.
• You can enable and customize different performance modes.
• You can check memory usage of all apps and clean up the memory.
• You can manage the storage in Galaxy S8 and S8+, and to free up the storage.
• You can scan the phone for malware.

So, device maintenance in Galaxy S8 and S8+ actually is a collection of tools to manage and optimize the phone.

How to access device maintenance in Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+?

There are at least three different ways to access  device maintenance in Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+.

Method 1: from Galaxy S8 Settings

You can start Settings app, or tap Settings icon in notification panel to access Galaxy S8 settings.

In the Settings page as shown below, you then tap Device maintenance.

Method 2: using widgets in Galaxy S8 Home screen

Samsung offers two device maintenance widgets in Galaxy S8 and S8+. You can add them to Galaxy S8 Home screen.

In the home screen of Galaxy S8 or S8+,  as shown below, you can access Galaxy S8 device maintenance by tapping Storage button or Memory button (marked in red rectangles) inside the widget.

For the small (1×1) widget, the button is for you to optimize the phone in the background without opening device maintenance.

The optimize button in the large (5×1) widget has the same function as small widget.

Method 3: Use app shortcut in Galaxy S8 Home screen

You can add a shortcut for device maintenance to Galaxy S8 Home screen.

As shown above, once the shortcut was added to the home screen, you can then tap it to open device maintenance directly.

To add the shortcut to home screen, you can tap the menu key (3 vertical dots) in Device maintenance page as shown below.

Then in the device maintenance menu, tap Add shortcut on home screen as shown below.

This would add the shortcut in Galaxy S8 home screen as shown above.

How to use device maintenance to clean up Galaxy S8 and S8+?

One of the nice features of the device maintenance in Galaxy S8 and S8+ is that you can clean up the phone with one tap.

As mentioned above,  the small (1×1) widget is actually the button for you to clean up Galaxy S8 and S8+.

The large (5×1) widget also has an optimize button.

So, it is very easy to to clean up Galaxy S8 and S8+ with the device maintenance widget.

You can also find the button after access device maintenance normally through Settings — Device maintenance, or using shortcut mentioned above.

As shown below, you can tap the Optimize now (marked as 1 in the screenshot) button to clean up and optimize Galaxy S8 and S8+ immediately.

The optimization (actually clean-up) includes:

• close non-system background apps;
• free up storage (delete unnecessary files);
• check abnormal battery usages of any apps;
• check app crashes;
• scan malware on the phone.

It will show a score in the big circle indicating the health status of Galaxy S8 and S8+ as shown below.

How to use device maintenance to free up storage in Galaxy S8 and S8+?

In addition to the one button option to clean up the phone, you can also free up storage for your Galaxy S8 and S8+  and check storage usage with device maintenance.

As shown above, you can tap Storage (marked as 4 in the screenshot) to manage and clean up storage.

In the storage page as shown below, you can find the detailed storage usage based on files types.

You can tap Clean Now button to delete unnecessary files (e.g., cache files) to free up the storage.

After tapping the button, it will take from a few seconds to about one minute for the phone to clean up Galaxy S8 storage.

The clean now button in device maintenance is safe. It will NOT delete your photos or documents.

Do NOT use the clean up (Get more space) in My Files app!!! It is NOT safe if you do not check carefully.

How to use device maintenance to clean up memory in Galaxy S8 and S8+?

You can also use device maintenance to free up memory in Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+.

This actually corresponds to memory manager in other Android phones.

In the device maintenance page, as shown earlier, tap Memory (marked as 5 in the screenshot) to access Galaxy S8 memory manager.

You can tap View More to see the detailed memory usage (by all apps).

You can also tap Clean Now button as shown below to clean up memory.

This will close some recent apps and close some non-system background apps.

But some apps may restart automatically after they were closed forcefully.  So, the estimated memory usage reduction is not accurate.

Please note,  it is NOT necessary to keep too much free memory. The unused memory actually is wasted. Android, like other Linux systems, can manage memory very efficiently.  Caching some frequently used apps and some data in the memory actually makes it fast to launch some apps.

The key point is that it is not necessary to clean memory very often. It may actually slow down the phone’s response. Such clean up is very useful for many entry-level phones with 1 or 1.5GB memory only.

How to use device security in device maintenance in Galaxy S8 and S8+?

Galaxy S8 device security refers to malware scanning and blocking.

Under device maintenance, you can scan the phone for any malware by tapping Device security (marked as 6 in the screenshot shown earlier).

As shown below, you can tap Scan phone to manually scan any malware in the phone.

It will take a few minutes to scan Galaxy S8 and S8+. Be patient.

If you only get apps from Google Play store, Galaxy Apps  and Amazon App store, you are actually very safe.

For most owners, it is NOT necessary to install any other antivirus apps (most of them do not help), or malware scanning apps.

Other features in device maintenance in Galaxy S8 and S8+

Device maintenance also allows you:

• to check battery usage details;
• to enable/disable battery saving mode;
• to customize battery saving mode;
• to set the phone in 3 performance modes: game mode, entertainment mode and high performance mode; and
• to customize these 3 performance mode and the default optimized mode.

Please refer to this guide (coming soon) on how to check battery usage and use battery saving mode.

You may check this guide on use and customize performance modes in Galaxy S8 and S8+.

Do you have any questions on device maintenance in Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+?

If you have any questions or encounter any issues with Galaxy S8 device maintenance, please let us know them in the comment box below.

The community will help you find the answer or solution.

You may also check our Galaxy S8 guides:

• Galaxy S8 new features guide covers all new and unique features of Galaxy S8 and S8+.
• Galaxy S8 how-to guides give you detailed step-by-step guides on using most features of Galaxy S8 and S8+.
• Galaxy S8 user manuals lets you download official Samsung Galaxy S8 user manuals in your won language.
• Galaxy S8 camera guides covered everything related to Galaxy S8 camera is covered in Galaxy S8 camera guides section.
• Galaxy S8 accessories guides help you find the perfect accessories for Galaxy S8 and S8+.

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