Do you always get an ‘iPhone storage full’ message? Are you running out of iPhone memory or is the storage space of your iPad full?
7 Ways You Can Free Up Storage Spaces When Your iPhone Memory is Full
Apps and games are getting bigger and bigger, making it time to free up space. With these 7 tips, you can get some scope again.
7 Handy ways to Free up iPhone Memory Storage Space
Do you have an iPhone with limited storage or do you use your device very intensively then chances are that the memory becomes full? You could remove some photos or apps, but there are smarter ways to do that. With these handy tips, you can free up a lot of iPhone storage space on your iPhone and iPad. They are:
- Use fewer apps
- Remove apps
- Smart trick
- Clear messages
- Data from apps
- Empty cache
- Clean photos
- Redecorate
1. Less storage space is needed, thanks to web apps
You do not need some apps every day. Consider, for example, the app of your newspaper, which you could also use via the mobile website. There are also apps that give common problems, such as the facebook app: it slurps unnoticed your iPhone battery empty and collects data about your use. Often mobile websites are just as good: Facebook can be used perfectly via the mobile browser, without having to install an app. Also, YouTube can be used via the browser. Especially useful if you rarely use it.
The use of mobile websites does mean that Safari saves data, such as cookies. It is, therefore, best to regularly clear the Safari cache.
2. Free up storage space by removing apps
You probably do not use all the apps on your iPhone. There are always a few apps or games that you will never look back to. Try to use as much as possible the standard apps that Apple provides, install a few apps that you really need and save the rest. Of weather apps and navigation apps you really only need one good. Use our app lists to find the best apps in a certain category.
Since iOS 11 you can have apps automatically removed if you do not use them for a certain amount of time. The data is simply saved, but the app is automatically removed from your device. You can download the app from the App Store at a later time and then have all data immediately back.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
- Tap General> iPhone storage .
- Turn on the switch in Room apps.
3. The Free smart trick for iPhone memory
With this trick, you can free up a lot of space in one go. Note that it is not an official function of Apple, so it will not work in future iOS versions. Keep that in mind if these steps no longer work.
- Go to the iTunes Store and tap Movies.
- Choose a random movie that is larger than the free memory on your iPhone. If you have only 400MB left, the film must be larger than 400MB.
- Tap on Buy or Rent, then you get a message that the film is too big to download.
- Be careful not to buy the movie by accident, so do not let your finger rest on the Touch ID sensor and do not press the iPhone X side button twice.
- If you go to Settings> General> iPhone storage, you will see that memory has been released.
By repeating the trick several times you can free up more iPhone storage space.
4. Clean up chat messages
With many people, the iMessage Messaging app takes up a lot of iPhone storage space, especially if you regularly exchange photos and videos with people. Go to Settings> General> iPhone storage> Messages to see how much space the Messaging app (iMessage) takes.
In some cases, it is only a few hundred MBs, but there are also people who have many gigabytes in the Messaging app. Scroll through the messages and throw away large photos and videos. Enable the option to automatically remove iMessage messages so that you do not have to worry about them anymore.
The same applies to WhatsApp: you can also have a lot of pictures and videos stored there unnoticed. We have a separate tip about clearing WhatsApp and reducing data usage, for example by not taking all photos in a backup.
5. Saving data storage per app
There are many more apps that store a lot of data. At Settings> General> iPhone storage you can see how much storage space certain apps use. Some apps are not that big themselves, but they download a lot of data (such as Spotify or the Podcasts app) or contain a lot of material that you have put in yourself (such as the Music app). Other apps that can unnoticeably take up a lot of iPhone storage are Garageband, iBooks, RSS apps like Reeder and navigation apps.
6. Empty the app cache
Often you do not have to completely erase an app. Clearing the cache may be enough to free up more iPhone storage. This is temporary information that is stored offline, but that you do not need immediately. It makes apps respond faster, but they also take up a lot of iPhone memory. You can solve this by clearing the app cache.
7. More space by removing photos
Photos and videos will probably take up a few gigabytes (!) Of storage space on your iPhone or iPad. You can view this via Settings> General> iPhone storage> Photos. It takes a while before you have the numbers in the picture.
If you tap the item Photos you can also immediately clear the folder ‘Deleted photos’, which saves a few gigabytes. These are photos that you have thrown in the trash for the last 30 days. These photos will be permanently erased after a month, but you can also accelerate this slightly.
All your photos and videos are also saved as backups on iCloud. If you use the free 5GB iCloud storage you will also quickly reach the limits. You could choose to save all photos to an external service, for example, Google Photos. With Google, you get unlimited storage, with Flickr 1 terabyte and with Microsoft OneDrive 5GB. You might get extra storage space from Microsoft because you use Office 365. Furthermore, you could make a backup of the photos.
Determine which photos you want to keep and discard the rest. That makes a difference when making backups.
The simplest way to backup all photos is to connect to the Mac or PC and then import all photos to a folder or external hard disk. However, you only have one local backup on a physical disk. That can be risky because as soon as the computer is stolen or the hard disk breaks you are all chalk. It is safer to also keep a backup with a cloud service, such as Flickr, OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox or one of the many other online storage services.
Last tip: redesigning the iPhone
Have you made a mess of it in recent years and do not know where to start cleaning up? If you want to free up a lot of iPhone storage space once, you can restore the iPhone and redecorate it. For that, you go back to the iPhone factory settings, after which you start again with a clean installation. But you can save many gigabytes in one go. Most people use only a dozen or so apps really intensively; in such a situation it is fairly easy to start with a clean iPhone.
These are the 7 handy tips to free up your iPhone or iPad storage space when it is full. I hope this article will help you to free up space on your device. If you have any queries regarding the above tips, let us know in the below comment section. We will get back to you to solve all your queries as soon as possible.
Do you know any other tips to free up iPhone storage space when its memory is full? Then write them in the comment box below.
