This is how you create additional storage space on your iPhone

Maybe you are like me and are very stressed when you get a notification on your iPhone that you are running out of storage space.

For some reason, knowing that my iPhone is almost full, I feel slightly tense. Kind of the same feeling when I have to tidy my room and really have to throw things out. However, freeing up iPhone storage is as necessary as it is relieving. I will now tell you how to do this.

1. Click on the “Settings” application on your iPhone

2. Click on “general”

3. Click on “iPhone Storage”

4. You will see an overview of your iPhone storage.

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This screen will probably be a little different for everyone because it shows you the composition of your personal iPhone storage. At the top, you will see the amount of storage space currently in use versus the amount of storage space remaining.

As you can see above, the items are color coded to indicate which apps are taking up how much storage space.

You can also scroll down to view each individual item / app and see how much space it takes up.

From there, it’s simple: delete items.

Your iPhone will give you some recommendations at the top to possibly make your job easier. Apple will also try to sell your iCloud storage here, or use the storage you have but may not be using.

Going back to the photo of my storage above, my phone’s main recommendation is to turn on iCloud Photos. Tap “Turn On” to “automatically download all your photos and videos and store them securely in iCloud so you can browse, search and share them from all your devices” and free up nearly 16GB of storage ( maybe I should). This would almost instantly solve my storage problem as my photos can take up most of the storage space on my phone.

The other recommendation from my phone is to automatically delete old conversations from my text messages. According to my storage summary, my messages are taking up more than 8 GB of space. If I activate the Automatically delete old conversations option, my phone will delete “all messages and attachments sent or received more than a year ago”. That would free up around 5.5GB of my storage – another decent chunk of space.

But think about it: you might want some of those old posts, including photos or videos someone sent you a long time ago.

Other options

If I wanted to see more recommendations, I could hit “show all” to see other simple things I could do to save space. I was able to empty my “recently deleted” photo album. Your iPhone stores photos and videos for up to 30 days after deletion (in case you make a mistake and want to get them back). Then they are gone for good. But you can also proactively free up iPhone storage space by emptying this album immediately, as long as you are sure you don’t want to recover any of your recently deleted content. In my case, enabling this option would free up almost 1 GB of space.

I can also see large attachments in my messages. Tapping on this recommendation shows me the attachments (photos / videos / documents) shared in my posts – sorted from largest to smallest, so I can see which ones take up the most space first. If I want to delete an item, just swipe left and hit “Delete”.

Once you’ve decided whether you want to turn on recommendations for your iPhone or not, you can scroll down and decide on an app-by-app basis what to keep and what to delete.

For example, let’s say I want to see the space occupied by iMovie. I scroll down, find iMovie in my list of apps and tap on it. My iPhone then shows me a preview of the app. I see the size of the application, the space occupied by documents and data in the application and I can “delete” or “unload” the application. It also tells me what happens if I choose one of these options.

Overload applications

When I choose Delete App, my iPhone “frees up storage space used by the app, but keeps documents and data.” If I want, I can reinstall iMovie, which will “restore data if the app is still available in the App Store”.

Unloading apps is a good compromise for people like me who want to free up storage space but don’t want to lose everything in the app being unloaded.

Remove apps

Of course, there is always the option to uninstall the app. “This will delete the app and all associated data from that iPhone. This action cannot be undone. “

If I wasn’t afraid of losing all the data in my iMovie app, I could choose this option and free up some storage space. I would still have the option of reinstalling the app from the App Store, but the data that was there previously would be gone, so I would have to start over with iMovie.

Chances are, all of your apps together occupy one of the largest amounts of storage, but you probably don’t want to delete all of your apps. And you shouldn’t feel pressured either. But if you take the time to review them in your storage and decide what to keep and what to delete, there is an easy way to spring clean your iPhone storage space.

For example, do I really need that Trivia Crack game that I played for 2 weeks in college when it was popular? Probably not. It doesn’t take up much space, but getting rid of some smaller apps will still save you a bit of storage space.

Storage on your iPhone

Your iPhone’s Storage menu, which you see above in step 4, is 100% key to managing your storage space. Once there, you’ll have the power and flexibility to do whatever you want with the things that take up space. Use your iPhone’s recommendations, uninstall some apps, check out your photos / videos, and do the spring cleaning of the iPhone that you pushed back from the start.

There are other tips and tricks to help you free up space, but the storage menu is definitely the easiest and best place to start.

Once you’ve done that, you probably feel like you’ve just cleaned your entire apartment. And that’s a hell of a good feeling, especially without the manual labor involved.

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