Clear Up Space on Your iPhone: Tips to Optimize iPhone to Run Smoothly and Fast

By Jasmine On Mar 31, 2022

Clear Up Space on Your iPhone: On our iPhones, we keep almost everything: family photos, videos, music libraries, and so on. That’s why it’s crucial to avoid running out of room. In 2021, Apple increased the default storage choice on the iPhone 13 from 64GB to 128GB, making it a little easier. However, if you need additional storage or have a lower-capacity iPhone, you’ll want to make the most of it.

Using a cloud storage service such as Apple’s iCloud, Google Drive, Box, or Dropbox to offload some of your files is the greatest approach to preserve local storage. However, there are a few options you can change to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your iPhone’s storage.

Learn how to free up storage space on your iPhone by reading the information below.

Table of Contents

1. To begin, determine what is taking up the most space on your iPhone

To get the most out of your iPhone’s storage, you need to first figure out what’s taking up space.
Examine what’s taking up your storage space so you know where to begin.
Go to Settings, then General, and then iPhone Storage.
To see a breakdown of the different sorts of files and media that are using up space on your iPhone, select this option.
Apple may also give suggestions for freeing up space, such as watching videos stored on your iPhone, as demonstrated below.

2. Check to See if Your iPhone’s Photo Storage Is Optimized

When it comes to eating up space on your iPhone, photos are one of the worst offenders. However, in the iPhone’s settings menu, you can choose to save smaller photo files locally instead of the original images if your device is running out of space.

Instead, these high-resolution photographs and movies are kept in iCloud, where you may access them whenever you want. Start by accessing the Settings app to ensure that this feature is enabled. Then click down to Photos and make sure the Optimize iPhone Storage option has a blue checkbox next to it.

When it comes to saving media files, make sure your iPhone is as efficient as possible.

3. Instead of Saving Photographs and Videos to Your Device, Upload Them to a Cloud Service

The best technique to free up space on your iPhone is to delete any files that you don’t need. However, this does not imply that you must reduce the quantity of your photo collection. Instead of keeping them on your device, try saving photos in a third-party cloud storage service like Google Photos. It’s a simple method to clear up a lot of space without having to give up old memories.

But before you delete anything, make sure you’ve backed up or moved the photographs you want to keep to Google Photos. If you don’t back up your photographs and videos to another service like Google Photos, Dropbox, Box, or OneDrive before deleting them, they’ll be lost forever. This article will help you through transferring your complete iCloud photo library to Google Photos, but keep in mind that the free unlimited storage option is no longer accessible.

If your images are currently stored on iCloud, you might be wondering why you need to use a different cloud service. That’s because deleting photos from your iPhone also deletes them from iCloud, so if you want to delete photos from your device, you’ll need to utilize another service.

4. Delete Any Apps You Don’t Use Anymore

Getting rid of apps you don’t use is another wonderful approach to clean up your iPhone. If you’re not sure where to begin, consider which apps you haven’t used in a long time.

Go to iPhone Storage in the Settings menu on your iPhone, then press General. You’ll see a list of your apps, as well as how much space each program takes up and when you last used it. Scroll through the list and delete any apps you haven’t used in a while.

5. Messages With Large Attachments Should Be Deleted

Images and videos from your text messages are stored on your iPhone, which can take up a lot of space. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage to delete these files. After that, scroll down and tap Messages, then Photos or Videos.

Finally, go to the top-right corner of your screen and touch Edit, then choose the photographs you wish to delete and tap the trash can symbol.

You may also clear up space in your Messages app by deleting other documents, but discussions don’t take up much space.

6. Delete Old Text Messages Automatically

While a single text message may not take up much space on your iPhone, they can quickly mount up. Go to Settings > Messages > Keep Messages and select 30 Days or 1 Year to have your iPhone automatically delete old text messages.

7. Delete Downloaded Music

You might be able to free up space on your iPhone by deleting tracks you don’t listen to anymore if you download music for offline listening. To do so, navigate to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and choose the Music app from the list. Finally, pick Delete by swiping left on an artist.

You may also tap an artist’s name to see all of their albums that have been downloaded to your iPhone. You may then remove an album or tap it to see the music you’ve downloaded to your iPhone and delete them one by one.

In iPhone Storage, What Does “Other” Mean?

Don’t be concerned if “other” storage takes up a lot of space on your iPhone. “Other” storage is a catch-all for a variety of temporary files, but your iPhone should delete these files automatically when more space is needed.

How to Clear iPhone’s ‘Other’ Storage

When you search the web, download a movie, and so on, temporary files are created and stored in Other storage on your iPhone. To eliminate these files, either clear the cache in your web browser or uninstall and reinstall the software.

Creating a Backup, Erasing it, and Then Restoring it

If everything else fails, you can recover your iPhone by backing it up to iCloud or a computer. Resetting your iPhone, on the other hand, erases all of your data and resets it to factory defaults.