If your iPhone or iPad is full, there are several steps you can take to reclaim storage space. In this guide, we’ll look at several options and methods available to free up storage on your iOS device.
Each iPhone and iPad has a fixed amount of storage, ranging from 16 GB to 512 GB for the iPhone and 16 GB to 1TB for the iPad. It’s always a good idea to buy the model with the maximum storage capacity, but after a while, even the device with the highest storage capacity can fill up, and it usually happens when you least expect it.
From the music you buy and the apps you download to the photos you take and the messages you receive, all of this content has to exist somewhere on the device. And you can’t add storage to an iPhone or iPad when it’s full. What you can do, however, is to free up existing storage space.
Basic storage saving tips
Apple recognizes that many people struggle to manage the storage on their devices, which is why it is introducing more and more tools in subsequent versions of iOS to help users master the various apps and media that often consume precious megabytes.
Launch the Settings app, then select General -> iPhone/iPad Storage and the storage space you use will be shown in the color-coded bar at the top. Below it, you may see a list of suggestions for optimizing storage.
These recommendations are followed by a list of installed applications and the amount of storage used by each application. The list also tells you when each application was last used, making it easy to find and remove applications that you haven’t used in a while or at all.
When you delete an app, its ICONS, application data, and any user-generated data are deleted. If you don’t plan to use the application again, that’s fine, but Apple also allows you to uninstall the application, which frees up storage but preserves the application’s icon and user data. If an application you use frequently takes up a lot of space, it’s worth checking to see if you can clear any caches associated with it.
Another option that Apple recently added to iOS is the ability to prevent your iPhone or iPad from automatically installing software updates. It used to be that new software updates would be downloaded automatically in the background and then installed through the “Auto Update” feature. However, in iOS 13.6 and later, the Settings app includes switches that let you choose whether to automatically download updates.
Recycle the space taken up by photos
The photos you keep on your iPhone or iPad will naturally take up storage space on the device, which can fill up quickly, depending on how much storage is available and what’s inside.
If you see a message indicating that your device’s Storage space is full, it’s worth checking out a system option called OPTIMIZE STORAGE, which is designed to work with iCloud Photos. This feature replaces full-resolution photos on iOS devices with smaller device-sized versions that take up less storage space, while full-resolution images on the device remain in iCloud.
Another way to prune your photo library is to check for unwanted photos taken in serial mode. Streamshot mode is the time that the camera on an iOS device takes a series of photos in rapid succession at a rate of 10 frames per second.
This is a great way to shoot action scenes or emergencies, because you’re always more likely to end up with the shot you want. But it also generates a lot of unwanted images, so it’s a good idea to select the best image for safe storage and then delete the rest to save storage space.
If you’re using an older iPhone, you can save space when shooting in HDR. On the iPhone X and earlier models, it also has the option to keep standard photos in your photo library when the camera takes automatic HDR photos, which is useful for comparison or when HDR images don’t display properly. However, if you need to, you can disable this feature to save yourself some storage.
In some cases, even if you don’t take photos on your device, you may find your photo library growing. For example, media that people share with you via WhatsApp might be automatically saved to the iPhone’s camera film. Fortunately, you can easily prevent this default behavior by disabling “save to camera film” in WhatsApp’s in-app Settings.
Of course, if your photo library feels like a balloon ballooning out of control, one solution is to start over and delete all the photos on your iPhone. Just make sure you’ve backed up all the backups you want to keep, and note that deleting photos with the iCloud photo library enabled will remove photos from all your devices.
Recycle the space taken up by the video
Some of the photo tips above apply to videos stored in the device’s photo library. However, there are other ways to prevent video content from running out of storage space. For example, you can customize the resolution and frame rate of the recorded video to reduce the file size in Settings -> Camera -> Recorded Video.
Elsewhere, if you regularly download Apple Fitness + videos to your iPhone or iPad, check out the suggestions in “Settings” -> “General” -> “iPhone Storage” where you should see them under “View Downloaded Videos” where you can remove them individually or from.
If you subscribe to Apple TV +, or if you rent or buy movies through iTunes, you can use the Apple TV app to download videos for offline viewing. However, if you want to save space, make sure that in Settings -> “TV” -> “Cellular Data” you select “Fast Download” (lower quality, using less storage space), which means the videos are lower quality, but they use less storage space.
Recycle space taken up by other applications and media
WhatsApp has built-in media management tools that help you identify, select and bulk delete GIFs, photos and videos that might fill up your phone.
The tool groups large files and media that have been forwarded many times, sorts them in descending order of size, and provides a way to preview files before deleting them. You can also view a media preview before selecting one or more files for deletion. To access the storage management tool, start the application and then go to Settings -> Storage and Data -> Management Storage.
If you’re an Apple Music subscriber, you can download songs, playlists and albums from the “Apple Music” catalog to your iPhone or iPad for offline listening, but this will deplore the device’s storage space over time.
Fortunately, the Music app includes a handy feature that takes effect immediately if your device runs low on storage space and automatically unloads songs you haven’t played in a while to make room for newer ones.
Check Settings -> Music -> Optimized Storage and make sure Optimized Storage switches are enabled. From here, you can also select the minimum amount of music storage you want to keep before you can start deleting downloaded songs from the device. You can also monitor the storage space by turning off automatic downloads in Settings -> Music and manually downloading new songs if needed.
Apple Music also allows users to delete individual tracks in the Music application. Simply hold down an item and select “Delete…” from the pop-up menu. “And then click” Delete Download “when prompted.
This can be reduced in several ways in the application of “messaging”. For example, iOS can automatically discard old messages that have been on the device for more than a certain period of time.
In addition, if you click the contact bubble and then click the Info (I) button at the top of the Message dialog, you can also see each file that has been sent to you in an easily accessible location in the chat thread, and you can delete them all in one sitting.
As the name suggests, messages in iCloud store iMessages in Apple’s cloud servers, rather than on each individual device. One of the benefits is that your emails, photos, and other email attachments are stored in iCloud, freeing up space on the device. You can enable the Apple ID slogan in the Settings app by clicking on it and selecting the iCloud-> message.
Other Apple apps worth checking out include the Books app and Voice Memos app. If you listen to a lot of audiobooks, try modifying the back catalogue and looking at all the old voice memo recordings to see if you need them.
We’ve covered the main storage-saving tips for the iPhone and iPad, but depending on your usage, there may be other ways to free up space on your device.