5 Tricks To Help You Clean Up Your iPhone's Storage And Free Up Space
With iPhones these days coming with up to 1 TB of storage, it might be tough to imagine ever running out of room. If you keep the same phone for a few years, though, you'll be surprised by how much you might download over that span, like trendy apps that you eventually forget about entirely instead of uninstalling them or ancient memes you don't even remember finding all that funny.
You'll notice that as your iPhone continues to become bloated, it actually runs slower. This will lead you to find ways to ease the burden your phone is carrying, and that comes from deleting things. Getting rid of apps you don't use is an easy path to take, and it's something you should certainly do. However, there are some other things you can do to clean up your iPhone's storage and get your phone back to running the best it can.
Get rid of unused apps
The thing that'll take up the most space on your iPhone is apps. You might have staples installed, like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc., that you don't want to get rid of, but that's not going to be the case for everything. For example, Threads was something that caught the attention of a lot of people before quickly losing popularity. Instead of leaving it installed indefinitely, you could simply uninstall it to free up space on your iPhone and reinstall it if people ever start to actually use it. The same goes for any other app you're not using a whole lot.
Going into your storage will show you just how much space an app is taking up and the date you last used it. If you see something with a large size and it's also something you haven't used in months, then the choice becomes very easy. Chances are good you have a lot of apps that fit this bill, and you'll want to delete those as soon as you can. If you find yourself wanting the app again down the line, you can always re-download it.
Clear app cache
Instead of outright removing some apps, you can instead clear their cache. This will clear up a good chunk of space on your iPhone if you have several installed. You might even be able to reclaim a few gigabytes of data if you spend time doing this with every app. It's a simple process and can be done in just a few clicks.
Go into your Settings, scroll to the app you want to clear the cache of, click it, and then scroll to the bottom and select the toggle for "Reset cache on next start." This will free up some storage for you the next time you launch the app, and if you do this for several of them, you can get a good chunk of storage from it. Eventually, the app will build its cache back up, so you'll want to clear it again if you're running low again. Clearing the cache won't have any impact on the app itself, so don't worry about losing any important data when it's cleared.
Delete photos and texts
Text messages and photos can take up a considerable amount of space on your phone. It's probably not as much of an issue as unused apps, but it doesn't hurt to tidy your messages and pictures every now and then. It can be easy to clean up your photos because you'll just want to eliminate any duplicates you have or anything you've already stored elsewhere. Many people take several photos at once, whether they're selfies or group shots, and then choose their favorite out of the bunch. If you do that often, you might have a lot of space tied to your camera roll that can be cleared out. You can also opt to store your photos through Google Photos, which will put them on the cloud instead of your phone. Deleting photos from your iPhone will also delete them on your iCloud, so you'll have to take the Google route to properly store them on the cloud.
As for text messages, you can just mass-delete a bunch of older conversations. The Messages app, in particular, will be the biggest offender here, and enabling the "Auto Delete Old Conversations" setting will help out a lot. There are not many reasons to hold onto older messages, so flip that on and start reclaiming storage space.
Be careful of downloads
If you download things like books and songs, you can find yourself quickly filling up your phone's storage. Apps like Apple Music and Spotify both let you download music so you can listen without being connected to Wi-Fi. However, that comes at the cost of storage space, and avid listeners and readers can find themselves running out of room very quickly.
Downloaded playlists for a long car ride are perfectly fine, but unless you have a data cap on your internet that you're trying to avoid, there's no issue with listening to music over your wireless connection. Downloading entire albums at a time will take up a ton of room, so it's best to get them deleted quickly unless you're listening to them daily. The same thing goes for books, as those can take up a lot of space, too, especially an audiobook that can be several hours long. If you stay on top of your downloads, you should be able to keep your storage space in check.
Clear browser cache
Like your apps, your web browser will also keep some data stored in its cache. This is mainly non-essential data that's being stored here, so whether you're using Google Chrome or Safari, you can do this to free up space in a pinch. This won't be something that reclaims large chunks of storage at a time but is instead more useful for people who are in dire need of some space. Whatever the case is, it's easy to clear the cache of your web browser.
Clearing Safari is as simple as opening up your Settings, clicking Safari, and then clicking the "Clear History and Data" option. For Chrome, you'll have to go into your browser's web history and wipe your cache that way instead of going into your phone's settings. You will start to build up your cache again over time, so it's not going to be a permanent fix.