According to Android specialist Mishaal Rahman, Android's storage utility is supposed to find apps and files eating up storage space so we can uninstall or delete them if required.

Rahman discovered that Google's calculation of the space consumed by Android system components needs to be revised. He executed shell commands to create a 3GB file in the /data/media/0 storage directory, which isn't a file path for Android system files. However, the phone's storage breakdown showed a 3GB increase under the System heading, suggesting the OS became bigger.

This happens because Android calculates system storage as the space used up by anything other than what's covered by different categories in the storage breakdown, including audio, videos, images, documents, trash, and games.

This means the System heading in the break includes more than just Android system files. Android 14 also uses this dangerously flawed logic for calculating storage usage. Moreover, the Files app by Google also shows similar storage use by Android system components, perhaps because it uses the same attribution logic.