If your iPhone or iPad is full, there are several things you can do to free up storage space. In this guide, we are listing the many options and techniques available To free up storage space On iOS devices. Get to know her.
Each iPhone and iPad comes with a specific storage capacity ranging from 16 GB to 512 GB for the iPhone, and 16 GB to 1 TB for the iPad. While it's always a good idea to buy a model with the most storage space you can afford, after a while even the highest storage capacities can fill up.
The apps you download and their files, the photos you take and the messages you receive, all of this content should be stored somewhere on your device. And when your storage capacity is full, you cannot increase it. What you can do, is to free up your current storage space. Here's how.
Essential tips to free up storage space
Apple understands that many people struggle to manage storage on their devices, which is why it has introduced more and more tools with successive versions of iOS to help users keep track of the types of apps and media that often take up large spaces.
Go to Settings> General -> iPhone Storage, and it will show how much storage space you've used out of the total. Below it, you'll see a list of recommendations for optimizing storage space, by reviewing and deleting large attachments, for example.
These recommendations follow a list of installed apps and how much storage each one uses. The list also tells you when you last used each app, allowing you to easily find apps that you haven't used for a while or have not used them at all and then delete them.
When you delete an app, its icon, data, and any user-created data are removed. It's okay if you don't intend to use the app again, except that Apple also allows you to unload apps, which saves storage space, but leaves the app icon and user data in their place. If the app you use a lot is taking up a lot of space, it's worth checking if you can clear any cache associated with it.
Another option that Apple added to iOS not long ago is the ability to prevent the iPhone from automatically installing system updates. The case was that new software updates were downloaded automatically in the background and then installed through the "Automatic Updates" feature. And in iOS 13.6 and later, settings include toggle switches that let you choose whether or not updates are downloaded automatically.
Recover space used by photos
Photos naturally take up a lot of storage space on your device, which can fill up quickly depending on the available storage capacity and how much content you have.
If you see a message that your device's storage is full, it's worth checking out a system option called Optimize Storage, which is designed to work with iCloud Photos. This feature replaces the full-resolution photos on your iOS device with smaller versions that take up much less storage space, while the full-resolution photos remain outside of the device in iCloud.
Another way to trim your photo library is to check extra shots taken in burst mode. Burst mode indicates when the camera on the iOS device takes a series of photos in rapid succession, at ten frames per second.
It's a great way to capture an moving scene or unexpected event, as you are always more likely to end up with the image you were aiming for. But it also produces a lot of unwanted images, so it is a good idea to choose the best one for safekeeping, and delete the rest to save storage space.
If you have an old iPhone, you can also save space when shooting in HDR. On iPhone X and earlier models, when the camera captures an automatic HDR photo, it can also optionally keep the standard shot in the photo library, which is useful for comparison or when the HDR image does not appear as expected. You can disable this function thus freeing up some storage space.
In some cases, you can find your photo library get enlarged even when you were not taking pictures on your device. For example, the media that people share with you through WhatsApp may be automatically saved to your Camera Roll. You can easily prevent this default behavior by disabling Save to Camera Album in WhatsApp settings inside the app.
Of course, if your photo library seems to be out of control, one solution is to start over and delete all the photos on your iPhone. Just make sure you have already made a backup copy that you want to keep, and know that deleting your photos with iCloud Photo Library enabled will delete your photos from all of your devices.
Recover the space occupied by the videos
Some of the photo tips above apply to videos stored in your device's photo library. However, there are other ways to prevent video content from consuming storage space. For example, you can customize the resolution and frame rate of the recorded video to reduce the file size from Settings - Camera - Video Recording.
Elsewhere, if you regularly download videos from Apple Fitness Plus to your device, check the recommendations through Settings - General - iPhone Storage and you will see that they are listed under Review Downloaded Videos, where you will be able to delete them individually or in bulk.
If you have an Apple TV Plus subscription, or have rented or purchased movies through iTunes, you can download the videos using the Apple TV app to watch them offline. However, if you are looking to save space, make sure you select “Lower quality, use less storage” fast downloads through Settings - TV - Cellular Data - this means lower quality videos, but they use less storage space.
Recover space used by apps and other media
WhatsApp features a built-in media management tool that can help you identify, identify and delete the GIFs, images, and videos that may be filling your phone.
The tool collects large files and media that have been redirected multiple times, arranges files by size in descending order, and provides a way to preview files before deleting them. You can also see a preview of the media before selecting one or multiple files to delete. To access the storage management tool, launch the application and go to Settings - Storage and Data - Storage Management.
If you subscribe to Apple Music, you can download audios, playlists, and albums from the Apple Music catalog to iPhone or iPad for offline listening, but this can gradually take up your device's storage space over time.
Fortunately, the Music app includes a handy feature that can start working when your device's storage runs low, and it automatically unloads songs that you haven't played for a while in order to make room for newer audios.
Check Settings - Music - Optimize Storage, and make sure the Optimize Storage switch is enabled. From here, you can also choose the minimum amount of storage you want to keep for the music before starting to remove the downloaded songs from your device. You can also monitor storage space by turning off automatic downloads in Settings - Music and manually downloading new songs when needed.
Apple Music users can also remove individual tracks in the Music app. Simply press and hold an item, select Remove from the popup menu, then click Remove Download when prompted.
There are several ways to reduce the space used by the Messages app. For example, iOS can ignore old messages that have been on your device for a longer period of time.
Additionally, if you click on Contacts and then the info button (i) above the message chat, you can also see every file sent to you in the chat thread in an easy-to-access location, where you can remove them all with one swipe.
Messages in iCloud, as the name suggests, stores your iMessages in Apple's cloud servers instead of on each of your individual devices. One of the benefits is that your messages, photos, and other message attachments are stored in iCloud, which saves space on your devices. You can enable it through the settings by clicking on your account and selecting iCloud - Messages.
Other Apple apps worth checking out include the Books app and the Voice Memos app. If you listen to a lot of audiobooks, try to cancel your back catalog, and review any old voice memo recordings to see if you need them anymore.
Conclusion
Here is a list of the main tips for saving storage space on iPhone, but depending on your use case, there may be other ways in which you can free up space on your device. For example, if you do a lot of managing files on the device in the Files app, consider compressing large files and folders by selecting Compress from the popup menu.
If you are still short of space and have exhausted all the above options, it might be worth resorting to the option to wipe your device and start again. If that doesn't help, then it's time to upgrade your device to a larger capacity.
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Thank you for this article and the extensive explanation. Sufficient and fulfilled, God bless you.
Why is Apple not working to make the iCloud memory like a memory card, so that the user can transfer all pictures and files to the iCloud memory and free the device’s memory when the user buys more storage capacity in the iCloud
I deliberately take a very large space device, in order not to go into the space and delete files, and I advise anyone after deciding to buy a new phone, to know what its storage requirements are, sometimes your need is about 128 GB memory, here your choice is supposed to be 256 GB, with this space you will save your need with additional space ,,, As for some who want to own an iPhone only and do not think about the capacity and take less capacity than they need, after a short period, they will enter the battle of deleting and filling the memory
Hi
Where is the fourth image in the settings?
I wish you could help us
We graduated with the iPhone from XNUMX and XNUMX gigabytes (and it was enough) up to XNUMX gigabytes now, and through experience I think that the iPhone user can adapt to an average area of XNUMX gigabytes, provided that he can learn how to organize the device space, for example: photos It is stored in the iCloud, and if you buy more than the standard capacity for $ XNUMX, you will get an additional XNUMX gigabytes to store your photos, and if you do not want to pay, you can transfer your photos to your computer and offload the iPhone first, and we must as iPhone users know a little about how to organize settings The device and applications, for example, as it was said in the article, you must stop the automatic download of WhatsApp posts in the gallery, as it consumes a large area of the device.
Also, most of us use WhatsApp or other applications, and the application data itself becomes enormous after a period of use (tens of gigabytes), so you must constantly delete things that you do not want to save.
In order not to reach the stage where you say that the mobile capacity is not enough, you have to learn as a user how to manage the space of the device, and this is something that is able and available to learn through Google and others, but it needs some simple effort.
May God reward you well, but I think keeping files on the calculator is the most appropriate and safest solution, and God knows best
May Allah reward you
The feature to remove the application does not work for me, what is the reason
We want a solution to the problem of not being able to make a backup copy even though the data did not exceed XNUMX g
A very, very important topic .. Most of them suffer from the large consumed space .. It gives you wellness 👍🏽🌷
شكرا لكم
There is a problem that bothered me in all my devices ... when going to the storage space option and going down to the end of the list
We find a cursor with the word "other" written on it and it is taking up a lot of space
For example, I have an iPhone that consumes 28 kikis
On my other device it consumes 6 kikis
What is this hidden space ??
These are system files that we have no part in.
The "System files" option is available and I have about 6.5 KiKis consumed
But the other option consumes 26-28 kikas
It is a big number for IOS
Not only system files! Rather, it is files inside applications, such as social networking applications, which have accumulated files such as videos and pictures stored inside them! So, for example, if you go to Telegram, then data and storage, then use storage, then delete temporary files, you will see a difference in freeing up space (other) in the settings before and after!
Notice! The aforementioned example does not delete photos and videos, but rather returns them to the first posting mode once!
I liked the article, it is really useful 😊 This is a problem that everyone suffers from, even me ☹️😭