iPhone in your pocket
Nomadic
There’s a good chance your iPhone will run out of storage at some point, especially if you bought the base model with limited space.
This can be more frustrating than with an average Android phone, as iPhone storage cannot be upgraded. There is no easy solution beyond figuring out what no longer needs to be on the iPhone and getting rid of it.
However, this is fairly easy to do, and many people will be able to unlock gigabytes or tens of gigabytes of space in a matter of minutes. That should stop your iPhone from complaining about lack of space for months or longer.
Here’s how to fix storage issues on your iPhone.
What happens when iPhone storage is full?
If you fill up your iPhone, you’ll see a pop-up on the screen. This usually happens when you’re trying to record a video without enough space on the card or trying to install an app that your phone doesn’t have room for.
Full storage not only prevents you from doing things, like downloading apps, but it also affects your phone’s performance. This is because iPhones use their storage for data needed during everyday tasks and app usage. And the flash memory itself gets slower as it approaches the full capacity state, as, again, the remaining space is used as a buffer during normal operation.
How to check current iPhone storage?
Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage to see an overview of the remaining space on your iPhone. This is represented as a bar graph divided into categories such as apps, photos, and podcasts.
The grey section on the right of this screen represents the free space on your iPhone. More colour and less grey? That means most of your iPhone’s storage is already taken.
Screenshot of iPhone storage.
Andrew Williams
Which apps take up the most storage?
For most people, photos and games are the main causes of storage hogs.
Games with console-like graphics tend to take up gigabytes (thousands of megabytes) of data because of all the textures, data, and audio they contain.
Images captured with your iPhone’s camera in the Photos app become part of your data. Over the months and years, these can add up to tens of gigabytes, if not more.
Any media app you like to use will also take up a fair amount of space over time. Podcast players and music apps you use to download content store this space as part of their data, and like Photos, this can become a huge drain on your iPhone over time.
Social media apps also use more storage than you might think. They cache a lot of data, so browsing through content feels smoother when you open them. However, the amount of data used should remain reasonably stable over time, so these apps probably shouldn’t be part of your storage-freeing strategy unless you literally don’t use them anymore.
How can you free up space on your iPhone?
Having trouble getting your iPhone in order? The easiest way to start is to simply delete some stuff. However, your iPhone also offers other, slightly smarter ways to free up space and identify the real data hogs.
There are four methods to follow, so let’s get started.
Delete apps and games
Already know what you want to get rid of? Long press on the app icon on your home screen until the app icons start to jiggle. This will happen after the first pop-up menu appears.
Tap the minus sign in the corner of the app icon and select Delete App. This will remove it from your iPhone storage.
If you want to see which apps are using the most data, you’ll find them sorted by size in Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
You can also delete apps here by simply tapping on its entry and then tapping Delete App in the menu that appears below. You’ll see another entry here, Offload App. This removes the installation data without deleting its other data. Use this option if you’re likely to reinstall the app later and its Documents & Data storage (visible on this screen) isn’t too heavy.
Download photos to the cloud
Getting rid of photos on your iPhone is the most effective way to free up space for almost everyone. The easiest way to do this is to upload full-resolution photos to your iCloud account and then let your iPhone delete them from its internal storage.
To do this, turn on iCloud Photos in Settings > Photos and select Optimize iPhone Storage at the bottom of this menu. This reduces the quality of the files stored on your phone, meaning they take up significantly less space, but you don’t lose anything in the long run as the full-size versions are in your iCloud storage.
Delete unwanted videos
Don’t like the idea of reducing the quality of photos on your iPhone? You may be able to free up gigabytes in seconds using the Review Your Videos feature in the Photos app.
Screenshot of iPhone storage.
Andrew Williams
If you have a lot of videos on your phone, you should see an entry for Review Your Videos in Settings > General > iPhone Storage. In this entry, tap the Select button and then tap the videos you want to delete.
We recommend using Airdrop to send them to your Mac in advance, if you have one, if you don’t want to lose these videos permanently.
Delete music and podcasts
There were tens of gigabytes of podcasts on the iPhone I used for this guide, most of them years old. Do you feel the same way? It’s easy to clean up.
For Apple Music or Apple Podcasts tracks, go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and select the app entry. Then tap the Edit button in the Podcasts or Music section.
Screenshot of the iPhone podcast.
Andrew Williams
This will place a red delete icon next to the artists. Tap it to remove an entry. Alternatively, you can delete tracks with more control from within the apps themselves, which you’ll want to do if you use Spotify rather than Apple Music.
How to buy more storage on your iPhone?
You can’t buy more storage space for the iPhone in the traditional sense. The amount of built-in space is determined when you order the phone and is soldered into place, so even tech-savvy people can’t expand it after purchase.
However, there is another form of storage available: iCloud storage. In this case, your files are stored on Apple’s servers, which keeps them safe even if you break or lose your iPhone. It’s also a crucial part of freeing up your iPhone’s physical storage, as we’ve already explained.
You can upgrade your iCloud from your iPhone’s Settings menu. Tap your account avatar, then tap iCloud. The 5GB is free. Here’s the current price for the upgrade:
$0.99 per month for 50 GB
$2.99 per month for 200 GB
$9.99/month for 2TB
Bottom line
Freeing up space on an iPhone is like spring cleaning. You get rid of what you don’t need and remove the clutter that has built up over the months and years.
The easiest way to do this without having to lose any photos or other content you’ve captured over the years is to rely on iCloud, Apple’s online storage service.
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