To download more apps and media, or to help your phone run better, you can clear space on your phone. Storage is where you keep data, like music and photos. Memory is where you run programs, like apps and the Android system. To clear cached data from all apps, go to Settings Storage and tap Cached data to clear the caches of all the apps on your phone. Apr 13, 2021 If your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is set up to access iCloud email, you can delete messages from any mailbox, then empty the Trash to free up space: Swipe left across any message to delete it. Tap your Trash folder. Delete messages one at a time, or tap Edit, tap Select All, and then tap Trash to delete all of them.
- How To Make Free Space In Internal Storage
- Clear Storage On Android Phone
- How To Clear Space On Iphone Storage
- How To Clear Space On Android Phone
- Aug 09, 2019 If you’re not ready to buy a new Android phone and you don’t have a microSD where you can move your data, you can probably pick up a lot of space with only a little bit of house cleaning.
- I don't remember the security code on my old LG phone. I want to clear out the phone to give it to someone else and it won't: Solved! My LG-AS330 phone is running very low on internal storage. How to set sd card as international storage in android nouget 7.0: Solved! Phone filled up and SD card not helping clear up space.
Introduction
iPhones are great. And since you're here I assume you agree, at least to a certain extent! Each year, Apple release new designs with bigger, clearer screens, faster processors, cutting-edge cameras and more. However, their storage capabilities always seem to be lacking (and it's very expensive to get those larger storage phones). One question that seems to persist through the ages is 'How to Free Up Space on iPhone'.
Apple have come a long way to help their users by way of storage issues with iCloud, but for many, this still isn't enough.
This article provides a guide which will show you 5 different ways you can get the very best out of your iPhone storage. Some steps you can do directly from your iPhone right now - others require the use of a third party tool such as TouchCopy (backing up your files to your computer before deleting from your iPhone - smart!).
You can jump to each step using the links below:
What's Taking up Space on my iPhone?
First, let's find out exactly what is taking up space on your iPhone, and how much space you have left.
Pick up your iPhone, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
You'll see areas like Apps, Media, Photos and Other (What's 'Other'? See Method 2) - as well as how much space they're occupying on your iPhone. You can scroll down on your iPhone to find out how much space each individual app is taking up. Spoiler Alert: tap an app, then tap 'Delete App' to get rid of it.
Read on to find out how to free up space on iPhone!
Method 1: Delete the Big Offenders
The easiest way to make the most room on your iPhone is to delete the stuff that's taking up the most space. The question is - what do you delete?
The first place you want to be looking is at your Apps, Videos, Music and Photos. Of course, these can all vary in size, but generally, that's where most of your storage will be tied up.
As you can see in your iPhone General Settings (iPhone Storage), your iPhone conveniently lists all your apps by size - biggest first. For the first step in this guide, scroll through the list on your iPhone and delete any apps which you don't need or use anymore. To do this, tap and App, then tap Delete App.
You may be pleasantly surprised by just how much space you can make with this step alone!
Further to this, the next big offenders are likely to be Photos, Videos and Music. You can go through their respective apps and delete anything you don't need. But to be safe, why not back up these items to your computer before deleting them, so you have a safe copy if you want them again? Jump to Method 4 to learn how to do this efficiently.
Method 2: How to Clear Cache on iPhone
Next, let's see how to find and delete data which you probably don't need saved on your iPhone. Cached data is information that apps and websites store on your device to make their applications work more efficiently for you.
For example, a website will store images in your cache so that when you go and access that page again, your browser won't have to fetch the image again because you already have it.
Trouble is that you probably access loads of webpages and use loads of apps too. This means that your iPhone becomes clogged up with oodles of information that it just doesn't need.
Get apps for mac. Every so often, we recommend clearing out your iPhone caches to get rid of any unwanted storage-hogging files.
Cached data and cookies come under the Documents and Data section of your iPhone Storage. Check out our full step-by-step guide to find out 'What is Documents & Data?' and how to clear cache on iPhone. To do this, you'll need to go into each app's settings and delete cookies, history and caches that you don't need.
Make sure you check the cache of all apps (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter..) and browsers (Google Chrome, Safari..) that you use on your iPhone for maximum storage return!
Method 3: How to Delete Duplicate Songs on iPhone
Beyond just deleting music you no longer like; you may have accumulated many duplicate tracks over time. This is true wasted space because duplicate tracks are unnecessary.
If you don't want to trawl through your library to weed out duplicate tracks, there's a great tool which can help. Tune Sweeper is software for PC or Mac which will cover all of your iTunes clean up needs. The feature we're really interested in is its ability to locate and remove duplicate tracks from iTunes. Once your library is clean, you can then sync it with your iPhone and hey presto - space saved.
Let's see how we can use the popular Tune Sweeper tool to delete duplicate songs on iPhone:
- Download and install Tune Sweeper on your PC or Mac
- Launch Tune Sweeper and click 'Search for Duplicates'
- Your iTunes library will be scanned, and Tune Sweeper will return a list of duplicate songs
- Manually choose which files to remove, or allow Tune Sweeper to do it automatically by selecting a Keep Selection Preference
- Once you're happy with the selections, click 'Remove Duplicates'
- Sync your updated iTunes library with your iPhone to upload your new duplicate free library to your device.
Try Tune Sweeper free ▼
Receive an email with a link so you can download the free trial on your computer:
Note: We respect your privacy. We won't share your Email address with anyone else, or send you spam.
Method 4: Backup data from iPhone to Computer then delete from iPhone
If you're still unsure about what to delete from your iPhone, back up your media first!
You can create complete backups of your iPhone in iTunes. Then, if you've made a mistake, you can always just restore the backup as if you'd not deleted the media.
If you're not a fan of iTunes, or you don't want to create backups of your entire device to your computer, try a program like TouchCopy. With TouchCopy, you can browse all your iPhone content from your computer, then transfer whatever you like and back it up on your computer. In this way, you get full control of your iPhone data, which is something you just don't get with iTunes.
Once you've safely copied a batch of videos or photos or music from your iPhone to your computer, delete them from your iPhone to clear up some storage space! Here's how it's done:
- Download and install TouchCopy on your PC or Mac.
- Launch TouchCopy and connect your iPhone.
- Click Photos.
- Choose which photos to copy, or ctrl+A to select all photos.
- Hit 'Copy Photos'!
Once your photos have been safely copied to your computer, you can delete them from your iPhone to free up that precious storage space! Deleted photos will be moved to a 'Recently Deleted' Album on your iPhone and will be kept there for 30 days. If you're sure you want to delete the photos, go ahead and empty your Recently Deleted album to reclaim the space.
Check out our guide if you'd like to find out how to delete single, multiple or all photos from your iPhone.
Try TouchCopy free ▼
Receive an email with a link so you can download the free trial on your computer:
Note: We respect your privacy. We won't share your Email address with anyone else, or send you spam.
Method 5: How to use iCloud to Free Up iPhone Storage
How To Make Free Space In Internal Storage
We've covered some major ways to free up some serious storage space on your iPhone, but it wouldn't be a complete list without covering exactly what you can do with iCloud on your phone. As I mentioned at the top, Apple have come a long way to providing storage solutions for iPhone users with iCloud.
You can use iCloud to store a lot of your files from your iPhone, without taking up the space on your iPhone.
Here's how it works: You take a photo on your iPhone. Instead of the photo being stored on your iPhone itself, it's stored in iCloud. Your iPhone can access and see these photos if you're connected to Wi-Fi or mobile data. Imagine if all your photos, videos and music were stored in iCloud. You can save some serious space!
The only downside to this method is that you only get 5GB of iCloud Storage space free. Anything more and you'll have to put your hand into your pocket.
That said, let's see how we can make use of iCloud to help with our space saving journey:
- On your iPhone, open Settings
- Tap General
- Tap iPhone Storage
- By Recommendations, tap 'SHOW ALL'
Here you can enable such features as 'Offload Unused Apps' and the aforementioned 'iCloud Photos'. Simply Tap Enable on the features you like the sound of!
With high-resolution photos and console-quality games, your iPhone storage fills up in no time. Even with a 128 GB model things can get out of hands fast. And if you’re using a 32 or 64 GB iPhone, chances are you’ll see that pesky “Storage Almost Full” alert much sooner.
Luckily, there are lots of things you can do to clear storage on iPhone, both manual and app-powered, so let's take a look.
What you'll need:
Clear Storage On Android Phone
- Your iPhone
- A photo cleaner app Gemini Photos
- Your Mac
- A macOS cleaner app CleanMyMac X
- Internet connection
Why is my iPhone storage so full?
Your iPhone may be full of things you don’t really need. Since they take up a lot of valuable space, it’s important to find out what they actually are. Here’s how to check and manage storage on your iPhone:
- Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
- At the top, you’ll see a color-coded bar showing how much space you have left, how much is taken up, and what's taking it up. The biggest categories are usually Photos and Apps, but that depends on your usage.
- Below there is a list of your apps sorted by how much space they take. You can tap on each app to see how much of that space is the app itself, and how much of it is the app’s Documents and Data.
Depending on how you use your iPhone, you might have a huge and bloated Photos app, bursting with photos and videos. Or it might be games and social media apps that are hoarding the most storage. Below are five easy steps you can follow to free up storage on iPhone regardless of your iPhone use.
How to clear storage on iPhone
Chances are, there’s a lot of unneeded clutter on your iPhone. And that’s actually good news. It means you can free up a significant chunk of space without deleting the things you want to keep. Here’s how to free up storage on your iPhone, step by step:
- Clean up your photo library
- Clear browser cache
- Clear app cache and other app data
- Delete attachments in Messages
- Delete offline content
Step 1. Clean up your photo library
If you’ve checked iPhone storage like we suggested above, you already know who the main space hogger is (looking at you, Photos). Of course, wiping your whole photo library clean is not an option, but there’s probably stuff you can get rid of:
- duplicate photos, like those you downloaded twice
- similar shots (like the five selfies you took so you can pick a good one)
- photos of whiteboards, notes, checks, and things like that
- screenshots you don’t need anymore
- large videos you don’t like
You can go through your library and weed out these photos and videos manually, but a quicker and more convenient alternative is an iPhone app like Gemini Photos. Here’s how to free up some space with it:
- Download Gemini Photos and launch it. It will automatically start scanning your library.
- Go to Notes, Blurred, and Screenshots. This is where you’ll see screenshots, photos of text, and other useless stuff. All photos will be pre-selected, but you can deselect the ones you still need.
- Tap Delete All.
- Go to Similar. Sets of similar photos will be grouped and pre-selected, with the best photo in each set remaining.
- Review a set, select other photos if you want to, and tap Move to Trash to trash selected photos.
- When you’re done reviewing sets of similar photos, tap Empty Trash.
- Go through Duplicates, Videos, and Other to sort out the rest of your photo library.
- Finally, go to the Photos app, and scroll down to Recently Deleted.
- Tap Select, and then Delete All.
After a cleanup like this your library will shrink by a few gigabytes and become way easier to navigate.
Step 2. Clear browser cache
If you often use your iPhone to browse the web in Safari or Chrome, keep in mind that your phone may be storing caches and other data that you don’t need. And you'd be surprised how much space you can free up just by clearing your browser cache.
Here’s how to clear Safari cache:
- Go to Settings.
- Find Safari.
- Choose Clear History and Website Data.
Cleaner for mac download. If you use Chrome, follow these steps to clear its cache:
- Open Google Chrome on your iPhone.
- Tap Options > Settings.
- Scroll down and tap Privacy.
- Tap Clear Browsing Data.
- Choose which browsing data you want to clear (browsing history, cookies, cached images and files) and tap Clear Browsing Data.
Step 3. Clear app cache and other app data
Unlike browsers, most apps don’t give you access to their cache and other data they store, such as login data. And if you tap on each app at the top of that list in iPhone Storage, you’ll notice it has several gigabytes of so-called Documents and Data. Here’s how you clear that app data to get more iPhone storage:
- Before you start, make sure you remember your logins to various apps or have them saved somewhere.
- In Settings > General > iPhone Storage, tap on an app at the top of the list. This will often be a social media app like Facebook or Snapchat, a messenger, or a content app like YouTube or Spotify.
- Tap Delete App.
- Go to the App Store and reinstall the app.
Yup, unfortunately, this is the only way to clear cache and other app data for the majority of apps.
Step 4. Delete attachments in Messages
Texting isn’t just about text, right? You’re sending and receiving memes, GIFs, selfies, little videos of your cat falling off the couch in her sleep. All that content is stored on your iPhone even if you don’t save it to Photos, and if you text a lot it quickly adds up.
Here’s how to delete all your attachments in Messages to clear some iPhone memory:
- Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
- Scroll down and tap on Messages.
- You’ll see a list: Top Conversations, Photos, GIFs and Stickers, and Other. Tap on the category that occupies the most space. Keep in mind that in Top Conversations, you’ll be deleting entire threads, not just the attachments. If you don’t want to do that, stick to Photos and other content.
- Tap Edit in the upper-right corner.
- Mark all attachments you want to delete.
- Tap the Trash icon.
That’s it! Space-hogging attachments are gone.
Step 5. Delete offline content
You probably consume a lot of content every day — music, videos, podcasts and what not. And if you save that content offline to be able to play it on the subway or during a long flight, you have quite a lot of leftovers piled up.
As a result, apps like YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify can take up several gigabytes of iPhone storage each. So why waste space on those Stranger Things episodes you downloaded back in 2017 and a long-forgotten playlist you never listen to anymore?
Let’s start with Netflix. Here’s how to delete Netflix movies and series you saved onto your iPhone:
- Open the Netflix app.
- Go to Downloads.
- Tap on the pencil icon in the top right corner.
- Tap on the red X to delete the video.
Next up, YouTube. To delete offline YouTube videos, follow these steps:
- Launch the YouTube app.
- Go to Library > Downloads.
- Tap on the three dots next to a downloaded video.
- Tap “Delete from downloads.”
- Repeat for each video.
Finally, to delete offline playlists or podcasts in Spotify, do the following:
- Open Spotify.
- Go to Your Library > Music > Playlists.
- The playlists you downloaded will be marked with a green arrow. Tap on a playlist like that.
- Tap on the green arrow icon below the name of the playlist.
- When a confirmation popup appears, tap Remove.
- Repeat for podcasts, if you have any saved offline.
You should also rummage around in Podcasts, Apple Music, and other entertainment apps you’re using. Once you’ve cleaned up all the offline content you don’t need anymore, you’ll see how much iPhone memory you’ve managed to recover.
How to prevent iPhone storage from getting full again
Just like your closet, iPhone storage will get full again, and you will have to go through the steps above every once in a while. But there are things you can do to manage your oh-so-limited storage more wisely and not have to do that major cleanup quite as often.
Store photos and videos elsewhere
Even after you’ve trimmed some fat off your library, chances are Photos still hogs a lot of iPhone space. What to do? Transfer your photos and videos to your computer or to the cloud
If you have a Mac, the easiest way is to connect your iPhone and sync all media files to the Mac. Then you can delete the originals from your phone.
Note that when you sync photos with your Phone, some of them stay cached on your Mac. This cache occupies space on your disk after the sync is done, so it’s better to clean it up. A utility like CleanMyMac X is an easy way to clear iOS photo cache (and it’s free to download). In just two clicks you’ll remove all the junk files from your Mac.
Alternatively, you can upload your iPhone photos to an online storage like iCloud. It’s pretty convenient, because iCloud Photos automatically syncs every photo and video you take to the cloud, so you can access your library from any device, as long as it has internet connection. You do have to pay for iCloud storage, though, because the free 5 GB won’t be enough for your whole photo library.
Here’s how to upload photos to iCloud:
- Sign in to your iCloud.com account. It’s the same as your Apple ID.
- Go to Settings on your device and select Photos.
- Turn on iCloud Photos.
Now your photos are automatically synced to iCloud, which means they'll be taking up space in iCloud, not on your iPhone.
Disable saving duplicate photos when shooting in HDR
On iPhones that don’t have Smart HDR, when you take photos in HDR, your iPhone saves two shots: the original picture and the processed one. You will save a lot of iPhone storage if you disable saving these duplicates. Just do the following:
- Go to Settings and select Camera.
- Disable Keep Normal Photo.
From now, only the HDR versions of your photos will be saved. That said, the previous HDR and non-HDR copies of your photos will remain, so do run your photo library through Gemini Photos to find those similar shots.
Stop storing messages forever
By default, your iPhone stores all the messages you send and receive … forever. This is convenient if you want to read your 2-years-old conversations, but not so convenient when you run out of storage because your brother sends you fifteen memes every single day.
To stop your phone from saving messages forever, follow these steps:
- Go to Settings and tap Messages.
- Scroll down to Message History and tap Keep Messages.
- Change Forever to 30 days or 1 year.
- You’ll see a pop-up message asking if you want to delete older messages, tap Delete to proceed.
How To Clear Space On Iphone Storage
Bonus tip to help you clean iPhone storage
In iOS 11 and later, Apple brings storage management tools to your device. This means that you get unique storage saving suggestions based on your iPhone. They include things like Reviewing Large Attachments and Conversations, Offloading Unused Apps, Saving Messages to iCloud, and others. Therefore, if you’re running iOS 11 or later, go to iPhone Storage and check out the recommendations.
How To Clear Space On Android Phone
We hope you found our troubleshooting guide helpful in tackling that annoying “Storage Almost Full” message. Enjoy taking new photos and never have to worry about lack of iPhone storage again.
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