iPhone storage full: this is how you free up space
If you have an iPhone with limited storage or if you use your device very intensively, there is a good chance that the memory will become full with, for example, photos and videos. You could delete some apps or games, but there are smarter ways to save space. Is your iPhone storage full? With these handy tips you can free up a lot of iPhone storage space on your iPhone and iPad.
- Check which apps take up a lot of space
- Clear app cache
- Remove unnecessary apps
- Use a web app
- Clean iMessage
- Clean up WhatsApp (and other chat apps).
- Clean up photos
- Make more use of iCloud
- Redecorate
- Buy another iPhone
#1 Check which apps are taking up a lot of space
Some apps store a lot of data. But which apps are the real culprits? This is easy to find out via Settings > General > iPhone storage. Some apps are not that big themselves, but download a lot of data (such as Spotify, Netflix or the Podcasts app) or contain a lot of content that you have put in yourself, such as chat apps. Other apps that can take up a lot of space unnoticed when you hardly use them are Garageband and iMovie.
#2 Clear app cache
Often you don’t need to delete an app completely. Clearing the cache may be enough to free up more iPhone storage. This concerns temporary information that is stored offline, but that you do not need immediately. It makes apps more responsive, but they also take up a lot of iPhone storage memory. You can fix this by clearing the cache of Safari and other apps.
#3 Delete unnecessary apps
Is your iPhone full of apps you don’t actually use? There are always a few apps or games that you never look back at. Try to find one app for each task as much as possible and only install the apps you really need (of course we hope the iCulture app is included!). You clean up the rest. With our app lists you can easily find the best weather app or the best navigation app. We have such a list for every category!
Since iOS 11 you can have apps ‘delete’ automatically if you don’t use them for a certain period of time. They then only disappear visually from view, because the data is simply preserved. You can download the app from the App Store at a later time and then have all data back immediately.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
- Go to App Store.
- Turn on the switch under Clean up apps.
#4 Use a web app
Some apps you don’t need every day. Consider, for example, the app of your newspaper, which you could also use via the mobile website. There are also apps that often cause problems, such as the Facebook app: it unnoticed drains your iPhone battery and collects data about your use.
Mobile websites are often just as good: if you rarely use Facebook, you could also consult the service via the mobile browser. The same applies to location and public transport info: you can often find this via Google, so you don’t need a separate app.
#5 Clean up iMessage
For many people, the iMessage Messages app takes up a lot of iPhone storage space unnoticed, especially if you regularly exchange photos and videos with people. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Messages to see how much space the Messages app is taking up. You can start by cleaning up your Top Conversations first. These are the people/groups you exchange photos and videos with the most. You can also see for each type of content whether something can be cleaned up. The largest photo and video files are at the top.
Sometimes it’s just a few MBs, but it can also be several GBs. You can also indicate that iMessage content should be automatically deleted, so that you do not have to worry about it. You will of course lose conversations.
You could also choose to download the photos received from someone first, so that you can save them elsewhere. If you tap the info icon (i) in iMessage in a conversation, you can see which photos you have received from the person. You can select all or part of them. Then tap Save to save them.
If you use iMessage a lot and send a lot of large attachments, you might want to turn on Messages in iCloud. As a result, all your messages, photos, documents and audio recordings shared via iMessage are end-to-end encrypted in iCloud. As a result, they take up less space on your iPhone itself, because all information is simply taken from your iCloud account. You then still have all conversations with you, but without this at the expense of your iPhone storage. Keep in mind that you need enough iCloud storage for this.
#6 Clean up WhatsApp
What applies to iMessage also applies to WhatsApp and all kinds of other messaging services. You can also have a lot of photos and videos stored there unnoticed. We have a separate tip about cleaning up WhatsApp and archiving all kinds of chats. In WhatsApp it is more common that you only have contact with some people for a short time (e.g. a window cleaner or delivery person) and it makes no sense to keep these conversations for a long time. We also have a tip about limiting WhatsApp’s data usage, so you don’t include all photos in a backup, for example.
#7 Delete photos
Photos and videos 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 a picture of the numbers.
Is the Photos app on top? Then it’s time to take a critical look at which photos you do and don’t keep. This requires a lot of work. You have special apps for this, such as Gemini, which can filter duplicate and out-of-focus photos. A handy trick is to clean up the photos by month or by destination, preferably if they are a year or older. For example, tidy up all photos from March 2021, because you can often better estimate what you want to keep at a later time. A photo of a fruit and vegetable stand or your meal is nice at the moment, but is no longer relevant a year later.
You can also opt for optimizing the storage via Settings > Photos, so that not all full-resolution photos remain locally on your device. However, they can always be retrieved in their original quality.
When you have finished deleting, immediately empty the Recently deleted folder, otherwise they will remain on your device for another 30 days. You do this as follows:
- Open the Photos app and go to the Albums tab.
- Scroll down to the Recently Deleted album.
- At the top, tap Select.
- At the bottom, tap Delete all.
#8 Make more use of iCloud
Apple offers more and more services via iCloud. For example, you can store the images from your security camera on iCloud thanks to HomeKit Secure Video and you can easily store all kinds of files in iCloud thanks to the Files app. Take advantage of that! If something is on iCloud, you’re less likely to lose it if your iPhone is lost or stolen. This way you can gain several gigabytes of space.
You can easily check how much free iCloud storage is left. The standard 5 GB may not be enough, but for €0.99 per month you can expand this tenfold. In our opinion, this is not a bad investment. Other storage services like Google offer online storage for about the same price. The advantage of iCloud, however, is that it works closely with your Apple devices and apps.
#9 Refurbish iPhone
Have you made a mess of it in recent years and don’t know where to start cleaning up? Did these tips not help and is your iPhone storage still full? If you want to free up a lot of iPhone storage space once, it is best to restore the iPhone and set it up again. To do this, you go back to the iPhone factory settings, after which you start again with a clean installation. You can save many gigabytes in one fell swoop. Most people only use a dozen or so apps really intensively; in such a situation, it is quite easy to start with a clean iPhone. Below you can read everything about restoring iPhone. Just remember that you don’t restore your iCloud backup, otherwise you won’t gain any extra space with this.
Switch to another iPhone
Do you have an iPhone with 32GB of storage or less? Then it is quite logical that your storage is regularly full. Apps take up a lot of space and the more photos you take, the more your storage fills up much faster. That’s why we usually recommend choosing 128GB or more when purchasing a new iPhone. However, 64GB may still be sufficient for some people. We have a separate article on how much iPhone storage to choose.
Not sure which iPhone to choose? We will also help you with that in the article Buying a new iPhone: which models are currently current?
