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Maybe you’ve owned your iPad for years now, love it, use it often, but forget about it once its purpose has been served. With so many other tech devices, including iPhones and Apple Watches, it’s easy to overlook your iPad. But when you ignore a device, you also run the risk of forgetting to provide occasional maintenance and cleanup, which can affect your iPad’s data storage and battery.
There’s a good chance an older iPad contains apps and files that you no longer need — but that are still hogging up space and draining your battery. These are the five things you should delete from you iPad right now, according to tech experts.
Media Files
One of the biggest sources of insufficient data storage is your media files. Chances are, you’ve racked up quite a few files if you have owned your iPad for awhile now. All of those photos you took years ago, or songs and movies you downloaded, watched, and have never thought about again, are unnecessarily sucking up space.
According to tech experts at iMyFone: “Some media files are better deleted than retained. This is because they quickly rack up space in your iPad. So, media file should be your first port of call when you want to delete some items from your iPad.”
Spend some time going through your photo roll and other media files. Delete the files you don’t need and save the ones you love to the Cloud.
Files In Your Trash Folder
You’ve dragged hundreds of files into your Trash folder over the years. Then, maybe you’ve forgotten about them, assumed they had disappeared, and moved on with your life. But if you aren’t taking that additional step to delete everything in your Trash folder, it’s as good as there. And those files will continue to take up space without giving you anything back in return.
Your Browsing History
This one is important for your own privacy and protection.
According to iMyFone: “Histories are your past activities on your device. They are personal and private. Why not permanently delete them to avoid privacy leak?”
To delete your browsing history, open the Settings app on your Home page, tap Safari, and then tap Clear History.
Apps That Take Up Lots Of Space
Clear the cache on your iPad to gain an extra boost of storage and battery power, according to Macworld. Clearing your Safari cache is one way to do this, but another is by clearing your app data.
According to Macworld:
1. Tap Settings > General > iPhone Storage. (On an iPad that option will be labelled iPad Storage.)
2. At the bottom of the screen you'll see your apps, arranged by the amount of storage they take up. Tap an app that's taking up a lot of space.
3. Take a look at the entry for Documents & Data. If it's using more than 500MB, it's worth deleting and reinstalling the app to clear the space.
4. Tap Delete App, confirm, then head to the App Store (or your Purchased list) and re-download it. This will be a clean install without the data and documents.
Built-In iOS Apps
You can now delete pre-installed apps on your iPad that you’ve never used and will probably never use.
According to tech experts at Pcmag.com:
Once you have iOS 10 installed onto your device, you can remove up to 23 apps that you couldn't before. Some are fine to remove if you have never used or rarely used them. Others require a little more explanation about what will happen if you delete them before you decide to do it. The apps I recommend removing if you have never (or rarely) used them are:
Calculator
Compass
Find Friends
iBooks
Music
Notes
Podcasts
Reminders
Stocks
Tips
Watch
Weather
Your iPad is an amazingly functional cross between your laptop and iPhone and, with proper upkeep and maintenance, can last you for years. Delete these five things from your iPad that are taking up space and you’ll get even more use out of your device.
