Pre-installed apps can be surprisingly helpful, offering built-in tools and shortcuts that make your device easier to use right out of the box. But how many of those apps do you actually use? From random games to obscure tools you’ve never opened, these apps can quietly hog valuable storage space and slow down your phone or tablet. You don’t have to keep them. With just a few taps, you can remove or disable many of these space-stealing apps and reclaim some much-needed room for the stuff you do care about. Here are seven pre-installed apps to consider deleting if you need more storage space.
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1. Voice Memos
Voice Memos may look like a lightweight app, but those little recordings can quietly gobble up storage, especially if you’re using it for long meetings, lectures, or creative notes. To free up space, open the app and delete memos you no longer need. Then, go to Settings > Voice Memos and change the audio quality to “Compressed” to save even more space going forward.
2. Stocks
The Stocks app itself takes up very little space, but over time, it can store cached data like market trends and news stories. If you're not actively tracking the markets, you can go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage, tap on Stocks, and delete it. You can always re-download it from the App Store if you change your mind.
3. Tips
Apple’s Tips app is meant to offer helpful advice for using your iPhone, but once you’re familiar with the basics, you probably don’t need it taking up space. The app itself is tiny (about 2–5 MB), but since it updates with new tips from Apple, it can slowly grow.
4. Compass
The Compass app doesn’t store a lot of data on its own, but it does use your location in real time, which can affect battery life more than storage. If you don’t use it often, you can safely delete it and download it again later if needed.
5. Contacts
The data inside of your Contacts app can take up storage space. You wouldn’t want to get rid of Contact, but you can clean things up by going to Settings > Contacts > Accounts and turning off any sources you no longer use (like old email accounts).
6. Watch
The Watch app is required for anyone using an Apple Watch, and while the app itself is around 50 MB, the real space-hogging happens when it syncs music, photos, and apps to your watch. You can go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Watch to see how much space it's using. If you’re no longer using an Apple Watch, unpair it and delete the app. And if you still use one and need the app, try being more selective about what syncs.
7. Mail
The Mail app can become a storage hog, especially if it’s pulling in lots of messages with large attachments. The app’s cached emails and downloads can take up hundreds of MB or more. To lessen its effect on your storage, go to Settings > Mail > Accounts, select your email, and adjust sync settings to only keep recent messages. You can also go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Mail and tap “Offload App” to clear the cache without losing your data.
