One of the most irritating messages you might see on your iPhone is "Storage Almost Full." And for those of you with iPhones that have between 8GB and 32GB of storage, there is a good chance that you see that message often.
1.) Back Up Your Photos And Videos And Delete Them
One of the biggest iPhone storage consumption culprits is photos and videos. You can find out how much space photos and videos are taking up on your phone by opening the Settings app > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage under the storage section.
Screenshot of Photos & Camera storage being used via iOS Settings app / Screenshot Credit: Amit... [+]
I would recommend backing up your photos and videos to an external hard drive and/or uploading them to cloud-based storage services. Some of the websites where you can upload photos include Google Photos, Facebook, Shutterfly, Flickr, Instagram and Dropbox. Google Photos and Dropbox allow you to upload photos and videos with the original quality, but you may have to pay a monthly fee when you run out of the allotted storage space. However, Google Photos allows you to upload unlimited compressed files at 16 megapixels for photos and 1080p for videos. Facebook and Shutterfly are also decent options for unlimited photo uploads, but the resolution is compressed on both of those websites too.
My personal favorite option is Google Photos because it has advanced facial recognition and the ability to search for people and subjects. Plus Google Photos synchronizes seamlessly between the Google Photos website and Google Drive.
2.) Remove Photos From “Recently Deleted” Album
Recently Deleted Album / Screenshot Credit: Amit Chowdhry
Did you know that your photos do not actually get deleted right away when you tap on the trash icon in the Photos app? When you delete your photos and videos by tapping on the trash icon, the content is sent to an album called “Recently Deleted,” which is actually cleared up after 30 days. So it still consumes storage space on your device for 30 days until you delete the content from the “Recently Deleted” album by opening your Camera Roll / Photos app, tapping on “All Photos,” tapping on “Albums” and tapping on “Select” and “Delete” or “Delete All.”
3.) Turn Off “Keep Normal Photo”
Another way to prevent the Camera app from using up too much storage space is by turning off the setting that causes duplicate photos to remain on your iPhone while in HDR mode. By default, your iPhone settings are set to “Keep Normal Photo” under the HDR section — which means that you are saving the normally exposed photo in addition to the HDR version. By turning this feature off, you will only keep the HDR version of the photo. You can adjust this setting by going to the Settings app > Photos & Camera > Scroll to the very bottom where it says HDR (High Dynamic Range).
4.) Delete Apps That Take Up A Lot Of Space
One of the fastest ways to save space is by deleting apps that you do not use any longer. Keep in mind that you can always re-download these apps again for free if you want it back. You can find out which apps take up the most space by going to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage under the Storage section.
For example, I know I have not used the Hot Pursuit, FIFA 11, Angry Birds 2 and iMovie apps in a while so I would get rid of those first. That frees up about 3.5 gigabytes on my iPhone. You can quickly delete these apps by tapping on the arrow next to the app under the "Manage Storage" menu and tapping on "Delete App."
5.) Delete And Re-Download Certain Apps
The more you use an app on your iPhone, the more the Documents & Data (cache) builds up. You can see how much storage that the Documents & Data consumes for each app by going to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage under Storage > Tapping on the specific app you want to see.
You will notice that some of the third-party apps that consume space on my iPhone include Google Photos (1.65GB), Words With Friends (1.55GB), Facebook (887MB), Instagram (720.4MB), Google Maps (673.7MB), Spotify (609.3MB) and Gmail (553.4MB). Deleting these apps and downloading them again can free up quite a bit of space.
6.) Delete Photos And Videos From Third-Party Messaging Apps Like WhatsApp
Do you use WhatsApp or other third party messaging apps? As an active WhatsApp user, I receive many photos and videos. Some apps save photos and videos on your Camera Roll by default. And even if you switch off the option to save incoming media from those apps, it still gets stored within the app itself. You might want to get rid of those extra photos and videos by going to the third party messaging app and deleting the multimedia.
For example, you can see the multimedia stored in WhatsApp by tapping on the group name at the top of a conversation and then tapping on “Media, Links and Docs.” Then tap on “Select” in the “Media” section and trash the multimedia that you want to get rid of. But before trashing the content, you should decide if you want to back it up somewhere first such as Google Photos.
7.) Delete Podcasts That You Are Done With
Another way to save space is by deleting podcasts that you have finished. If you download video podcasts, then you will notice that it eats up storage pretty quickly. You can see which podcasts are downloaded on your iPhone by going to the Settings app > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage under the Storage section > Podcasts. Then you can delete the podcasts by tapping on Edit and the delete button.
8.) Turn Off Photo Stream
The Photo Stream feature automatically uploads new photos and sends them to all of your iCloud devices when connected to Wi-Fi. By having Photo Stream turned on, the photos you have saved on your iPhone, iPad and Mac sync together. Turning off this feature could save you some space. You can turn off the feature by going to the Settings app > Photos & Camera > My Photo Stream.
9.) Prevent Mail App From Loading Images Automatically
If you get a lot of emails with images, then you can save some space by blocking the app from downloading the images automatically. You can set this up by going to the Settings app > Mail > Slide Load Remote Images to off. When you want the Mail app to load images, you just have to tap on “Load All Images.”
10.) Clear Out Text Messages
Another app that is known for taking up quite a bit of space is the Messages app. If you do not regularly delete your text messages with multimedia attached, then the Messages app could end up consuming several gigabytes.
You can see how much space your Messages app is consuming by going to the Settings app > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage > Scroll down to where it says Messages. Then you can delete messages by opening the Messages app, tapping on “Edit” in the conversations view and then tapping on the red delete icon for each one that you want to get rid of.
And if you want to have old messages delete automatically after a set amount of time, then there is a setting that allows you to do so. This can be set up by going to Settings app > Messages > Message History > Keep Messages > 30 Days, 1 Year or Forever. I would recommend the 30 days option.
11.) Delete Built-In Apple Apps
With the iOS 10 update, Apple added the ability to remove built-in apps from the Home screen. And when you remove a built-in app from your Home screen, it also removes any related user data and configuration files. Apple has made its built-in iOS apps to be space efficient so it won’t add much space to your device if you remove them, but this could help if every megabyte counts. The built-in apps that you can remove from your Home screen include: Calculator, Calendar, Compass, Contacts, FaceTime, Find My Friends, Home, iBooks, iCloud Drive, iTunes Store, Mail, Maps, Music, News, Notes, Podcasts, Reminders, Stocks, Tips, Videos or TV, Voice Memos, Watch and Weather.
12.) Delete Siri Voices You Do Not Use
You can save space by deleting the Siri voices that you do not use. To see which Siri voices are downloaded to your iPhone, go to the Settings app > General > Accessibility > VoiceOver > Speech. Some of the voices add up to hundreds of megabytes. You can delete them by tapping on the voice name, tapping on “Edit” and then hitting delete.
13.) Delete Audio Voicemails
The voicemails that are saved on your iPhone can take up a bit of space. So you should delete your voicemails on a regular basis. If there are certain voicemails that you want to save before deleting them, then you can go to the list of your Voicemails and tap on the share icon at the top right. The share button will allow you to save the voicemail to iCloud Drive, the Messages app, the Notes app, Dropbox, Google Drive, the Mail app, etc.
You can delete the voicemails by opening up the Phone app, tapping on Voicemail, tapping on Edit, selecting voicemails you want to delete and then tapping on “Delete.” After that, you will want to scroll to the bottom of the Voicemail section, tap on “Deleted Messages” and then tap on “Clear All.”
14.) Third Party Storage Devices
There are a number of third-party hardware devices available on Amazon and eBay with Lighting connectors for extra external storage made by companies like SanDisk, HooToo, Omars, Devia and FeBite. Many of the third-party storage drive devices for the iPhone support the ability to stream audio, video and images. These devices can add an extra 32GB or 64GB of storage.
15.) Clear Safari Cache
If you already deleted a lot of other files and you are still struggling with storage space, then you might want to consider clearing the Safari cache. You can do this by going to Settings app > Safari > Advanced > Website Data. Then you can swipe-to-delete the cache for each individual website from this section or tap on the “Edit” button to bring up the delete icon.
To clear up all of the Safari cache in one go, you can do that by going to the Settings app > Safari > Clear History and Website Data. In the screenshot above, you will notice I could gain about 10 megabytes by doing that.
16.) Only Keep Your Favorite Photos From Burst Mode
When you push down the shutter button or take photos using the timer, burst mode is activated. Burst mode means that multiple photos are taken at a time in order to capture the best moment during an action shot. Currently, it is not possible to deactivate Burst Mode while using the timer.
You can save some space by keeping only your favorite photos saved from a burst mode set of photos. This is possible by opening a photo that was taken in Burst Mode and tapping on Select. Then scroll through the set of photos at the bottom of the “Choose Favorites” menu and checkmark the ones you want to keep by tapping on the circle at the bottom right. Once you have selected the photos you want to keep, tap on Done. And then tap on “Keep Only [X] Favorites.”
17.) Download Software To Clear Up Space On Your iPhone
One of the biggest nuisances is connecting your iPhone to iTunes and seeing a category called “Other” consuming a good amount of your storage space. The “Other” section includes the operating system, cookies on Safari and other temporary files.
Fortunately, there are applications like PhoneClean -- which will remove files that are not necessary and are classified as "Other." PhoneClean will also back up your files before removing the files just in case something goes wrong. PhoneClean works for iPhones, iPads and iPods.
18.) Start All Over By Erasing Everything
If you are still struggling to clear up a good amount of space on your iPhone, then you might want to consider resetting the device to the factory settings. You can reset your iPhone to factory settings by going to the Settings app > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings.
Do you struggle with storage space on your iPhone? Are there any other tips that work well for you? Please leave a comment!
