The issue of how much space remains on your iOS phone may not cross your mind until the dreaded “iCloud Storage Almost Full” notification appears. Once this occurs, you begin to view everything on your phone as invaluable and become hesitant to download new apps, Spotify playlists, YouTube videos, take additional pictures, or update your operating system to the latest version.
It can become so frustrating that you may start researching the cost of a new phone with greater memory. However, the truth is, you can never have enough storage space.
To prevent reaching this point, we have compiled a list of facts for freeing up memory on your phone.
1. Optimizing Your Photos and Videos
The things that take up a lot of your iPhone’s space are usually pics and vids. They get saved automatically in their high-res original version, which takes up a lot of storage space. Fortunately, the iPhone’s settings menu provides an option to upload photos from iphone to icloud and keep smaller versions of the photos on your device if space is limited. This enables you to free up more memory on your device while still being able to access your entire full-resolution photo collection wherever you go.
To ensure that this feature is enabled, follow these steps: Open the Settings app, select your name, tap on iCloud, then select Photos. From there, tap Sync this iPhone, or if using iOS 15 or earlier, activate iCloud Photos. Finally, confirm that the Optimize iPhone Storage option has a blue checkmark next to it.
2. Targeting Apps You No Longer Use
If you need some extra room on your iPhone, a super useful trick is to get rid of apps that you never use or hardly ever use. There are two simple ways to do this: offload them or delete them altogether.
Delete Them
To delete an app off your phone, just head to the Settings menu on your iPhone, tap “General,” then find “iPhone Storage.” Once you’re on the storage page, look for the apps you want to get rid of, then give them a quick tap. Finally, hit “Delete App.” Remember: if you ever want the app back later, you can download it again without paying anything extra from the App Store.
Offload Them
If you don’t want to totally delete an app but still need more space for a killer new iOS update, you can also “Offload” it. This keeps the app icon on your home screen, but you’ll have to tap it again to download it whenever you want to use it. To offload an app instead of chucking it completely, just look for it on the storage list, tap it once, and pick “Offload App.”
3. Turning Off Automatic Downloads
By default, automatic downloads are enabled on Apple devices. This means that new episodes of your subscribed shows on the Podcasts app and music on Spotify will automatically download onto your iPhone, which can take up valuable storage space. Apple’s rationale behind this is to facilitate the process of staying up-to-date with the latest episodes of subscribed shows. In addition, there are several other fascinating facts about Apple products worth knowing.
However, if you want to conserve space, you can turn off automatic downloads by going to the Settings app, scrolling down to find Podcasts or Spotify, tapping on the Automatically Download option, and selecting Off.
4. Getting Rid of Old Photos
It’s important to remain mindful of how effectively you’re using your photos, even with iCloud storage. One of the most crucial steps in managing your photo library is eliminating unnecessary photos.
To simplify this process and save time, open Settings, select General, and then choose iPhone Storage. From there, navigate to the Photos app and delete the “Recently Deleted” album by tapping on Empty.
5. Clearing Safari Cache
Although deleting apps and media will have a more significant impact, clearing your cache can also potentially speed up your browsing experience.
To get started, open the Settings app and navigate to Safari. From there, select Clear History and Website Data. You’ll want to make sure that you’ve checked the following categories before clearing your cache:
- Browsing History
- Cookies
- Site Data
- Cached Images
- Files
If you only want to clear data for a specific time period, you can select the Time Range option before tapping Clear Browsing Data at the bottom of the screen.
6. Limiting iMessages
If you want to clear up some space on your iPhone, you also might need to check if those old text messages are hogging up your storage. To fix this, you can tweak your message history settings. Simply open up the Settings app, hit Messages, and pick Message History. Then, choose how long you want to keep those texts – it can be anywhere from a month to a year or even forever.
7. Dealing with an ‘Other’-Related Term
After attempting to free up some storage on your iPhone using various methods, you may still come across the mysterious storage hog known as “Other”. This catch-all term includes a variety of cached files and system data that can be difficult to pinpoint and clear out.
But don’t worry, there are ways to reduce its size. First, navigate to Settings > General and look for the apps that are taking up the most data. If you notice that streaming or other similar apps are occupying a significant amount of space, try reinstalling them to clear out their cache.
We hope that you enjoyed these facts and you will be able to successfully clear some space on your phone. Remember that maintaining a clean memory can lead to better performance and an overall smoother user experience, so it’s definitely worth investing some time in regular device cleanups.
