When you think about apps and programs taking up storage space, you probably think about games like GTA V, video editing tools like DaVinci Resolve, and other professional tools like AutoCAD. These are obvious storage hogs, and you expect them to take several gigabytes from the moment you install them.
However, beyond these, there are several popular Windows apps that quietly eat up space. These often go unnoticed because they gradually build up data over time. The problem is that these are apps you actually rely on daily, so removing them is really not an option. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce the amount of storage they take and give your PC much-needed breathing room.
Spotify
The hidden storage cost of nonstop streaming
Apps like Spotify might feel harmless when it comes to storage. After all, it’s a streaming service, so it shouldn’t take much storage space…right? Unfortunately, that’s far from the truth. While the main app itself takes less than a couple of hundred megabytes, Spotify can build up a lot of cached data over time. Every song you play, every playlist you browse, and every album cover you scroll past adds to a growing pile of stored files behind the scenes.
Sure, the cache is what makes the music load faster, but over weeks or months, that cache can balloon into several gigabytes without you realizing it. If you want to check for yourself, head to the Storage section in Spotify’s Settings menu. In my case, it had grown to 10GB. Yours might be even higher.
And this is just the cache. It doesn’t even include your offline downloads. If you regularly download albums or playlists, Spotify can end up taking a significant chunk of your overall storage space. The best remedy here is to just clear the cache regularly from Spotify’s storage menu.
Adobe Acrobat
When a PDF reader becomes a storage monster
Adobe Acrobat is one of those apps almost everyone ends up installing at some point. Part of the reason is Windows doesn’t have a dedicated PDF reader. While Adobe Acrobat is a great app, it also has a bad habit of hogging storage space.
This mostly happens due to automatic updates. Every time Adobe Acrobat downloads one, it keeps the installer file on your system. So after a few months of using Adobe, you shouldn’t be surprised if it shows at the top of the storage usage list. The worst part is that this isn’t something you’d expect from a simple document app.
On my PC, Adobe Acrobat was only a little over 1GB because I haven’t been using it for long. But if you are, it’s not unusual for it to take 10GB, 20GB, or even more. The good thing is that it’s easy to remove all the old installer files. Head to C: > ProgramData > Adobe > ARM, and you’ll see all of them. You can safely delete these to reclaim storage space.
Why You Don’t Need Adobe Reader (And What to Use Instead)
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WhatsApp
If WhatsApp is your go-to app for staying in touch with friends and family, installing it on your PC is a no-brainer. It mirrors the mobile experience so well that you barely need to reach for your phone anymore.
What you may not have realized is that every photo, video, document, or voicenote is stored locally. Since these files don’t show up in your regular Downloads folder, they are easy to miss. All of these downloads can add up fast without you even knowing.
I use WhatsApp daily on my PC, and it was taking up almost 15GB. Your number might be higher or lower depending on how often you download media and how large those files are. To see and manage all your downloaded WhatsApp files, head to the following directory. Make sure to replace UserName with your Windows username.
C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Packages\5319275A.WhatsAppDesktop_cv1g1gvanyjgm\LocalState\shared\transfers
Outlook
The inbox that never stops growing
Since Microsoft has retired its Mail app, Outlook is now the default email client on Windows PCs and ti is known for taking up a surprising amount of storage.
This mostly happens because of how it handles email data. It stores offline copies of your emails, attachments, calendar data, and even cached images on your local drive. This means every attachment you preview, every image that’s in your email, and your synced calendar takes storage space. All of this together can easily take anywhere from 5GB to 30GB or more storage, depending on how busy your inbox is.
One of the best ways to reduce this is to remove email accounts that you no longer use. Clearing Outlook’s cache also helps. For that, press Win + R, type in %localappdata%\Microsoft\Outlook and hit Enter. Then, delete all the files and folders that appear.
These are just a few examples of apps that might be taking a major chunk of your PC’s storage. You can also expect apps like Discord, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and many others that tend to store cache data to eat up storage space over time. If you can’t live without them, the best thing to do is clear their cache data on a regular basis.