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One of the things about actively using a smartphone every day is that sooner or later, it’s going to become filled with videos, photos and other files. When that happens, you’re going to need to buy more storage space or free it up somehow.
In this article, I’m going to show some easy steps on how to clear up storage on your iPhone.
I’ve had five generations of the iPhone, so I’ve had to free up storage space many times.
You may be wondering why your iPhone keeps running out of storage space in the first place. The short answer is that you have too many videos, photos, apps and other kinds of files stored on your device.
The first thing you need to do is to find out exactly what’s taking up most of your storage.
To find out, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and you should see a bar graph that shows how much space you have. It will also give you some recommendations on how to free up some storage space:
From the screenshot above, you can see that apps take up the majority of the space on my iPhone, followed by iOS system files and then messages and photos. Now it’s time to free up some space.
Here are some recommendations Apple’s iPhone Storage screen shows you to free up storage space.
If your phone has a lot of apps, in iPhone Storage, you’ll see Offload Unused Apps. which allows you to remove selected apps while keeping their documents and data intact. Enabling Offload Unused Apps is an easy way to save space.
Instead of offloading an app, you may choose to just delete it altogether. Perhaps you have apps on your iPhone that you don’t use anymore. They’re just taking up the space you need for other things.
If you scroll down the iPhone Storage screen, you can see the apps you’ve installed along with the last time you opened them.
Just find the “Last Used” line under the app’s name to help you decide whether you should keep it or delete it to save space.
If you click on the app, the iPhone also gives you the option to “Offload” the app, which will delete it from your device but restore your documents and data if you choose to re-install it.
Your old conversations in iMessage may be taking up way too much space on your device. Here’s how to delete them:
If you go to Settings > Messages > Message History, you can select how long you wish to keep old conversations on your iPhone. You have three options to choose from:
Selecting this option to auto-delete your iMessage every 30 days or one year is a great way to save storage space on your device without having to pay attention to it.
You may also find that your iMessages have large attachments, which is another recommendation my device lists as a way to free up space. From the iPhone Storage screen, tap on Review Large Attachments and go through them one by one and delete those you no longer want.
To save space, you may also decide to store your files in a cloud account rather than on your iPhone. If you choose this option, the obvious choice for an iPhone user is iCloud, which comes with 5GB (gigabytes) of free storage space.
Here are some other popular cloud storage services you can get for free:
Read about the best FREE cloud storage services you should try.
You can also choose to back up your iPhone files to a desktop computer or tablet. You can do this by connecting your iPhone to your computer with a cord or by syncing it with an iCloud account installed on your desktop.
If you choose to store your files on your PC, the good news is that your iPhone will no longer be the sole repository for your files and data.
The not-so-good news is that this option may take up quite a bit of space on your computer. Read how to transfer photos from your iPhone.
Another way to free up space on your iPhone is to manage photos in your iCloud account.
To do this, go to Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > Photos, you can find several options that will allow you to save space by managing the images on your iPhone. They include the ability to:
Aside from options that allow you to manage files on your phone, you may decide that you just want to buy more cloud storage space. Apple currently offers paid storage plans as part of iCloud+:
You can also choose to go with a third-party cloud service listed above (See #4).
As a recap, here are the best ways to free up storage space on your iPhone:
If you find that your issue is more about data than storage, check out some steps to conserve data on an iPhone or Android device.
If you’ve found a different method that frees up a good bit of storage space on your iPhone, please tell us about it in the Clark.com community.
This post was last modified on April 30, 2024 12:13 pm
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