If you’re running out of space on your iPhone, here’s a few tips to clear out as much storage as possible.
1. Find out which apps are taking up the most space on your iPhone and delete apps you don’t need
Go to Settings > General > Usage and tap on Manage Storage under Storage
Now scroll through the list and be brutal. You will find the biggest space wasters at the top – probably your Photos and Music app, but possibly your Messages app if you receive a lot of text messages with images in them.
There are bound to be apps you downloaded and only used once. Ditch them. The benefit of deleting a few apps is that you could free up as much as 500MB with very little effort.
2. Turn off Photo Stream
If you have Photo Stream turned on you will see photos you have taken on your iPhone or iPad, and those you have
uploaded to your Mac from your camera. These images aren’t full res, but are still likely to take up a lot of space on your iPhone. If you could really do with that extra space then turn off Photo Stream.
Go to Settings > Photos & Camera and deselect My Photo Stream. This will delete your Photo Stream from your iPhone.
3. Don’t Share
You can create and share photo streams with other people. This is a nice way to share images of events you attended with friends, or pictures of grandchildren with grandparents, but beware that if you join someone else’s photo stream it may quickly fill up your iPhone.
Make sure you have Photo Sharing turned off in Settings > Photos & Camera.
4. Remove iBooks you aren’t reading
Do you have any iBooks downloaded on your iPhone? Do you need them to be there? If you delete them they will still be available in iCloud to download again, so why not save yourself a few MB by removing the novel you are reading on your iPad from your iPhone.
5. Delete Messages
iMessages, especially ones with photo and video attachments, can eat up a lot of space without immediately coming to your notice. You can delete iMessage threads that you know include a lot of photos by opening the Messages app and swiping from right to left. You can also individually delete each message by long tapping on a chat bubble, tapping more and then deleting unwanted messages.
