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There never seems to be enough data on your iPhone — and gaining back space is always a goal. But it’s easier said than done, so unless you are willing to pay more money and upgrade your phone to get more space, you may be stuck with what you have (and be limited when it comes to things like taking videos and photos). UNLESS, of course, you have a few good space-saving tricks up your sleeve. Before you spend a cent on extra storage space, check out these five things you didn’t know you could do to free up so much more data on your iPhone.
Find Out What’s Taking Up Space
Before you solve the space and data problem, you need to know what, exactly, is stealing so much of your phone’s storage space. No two smartphone users are exactly alike in terms of their storage needs and you may be surprised at what you learn when you dive a little deeper. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and you’ll find a handy colorful bar graph that shows how much storage you have and how much of it is being taken up by things like apps, photos, and messages.
Get Rid Of Apps You Don’t Use
If there’s an app you never use, just delete it. You won’t miss it (and if you do, it’s simple to get it back). Apps can take up an enormous amount of storage space, especially those that have tons of features. Go to iPhone Storage > find the apps you want to delete > click on Delete App. This setting also allows you to see the amount of space each app is using.
Move Photos To iCloud
Photos and video take up a lot of space. You won’t want to get rid of these precious memories, but you can move them over to iCloud and delete them off of your phone to make space for more photos and data.
Delete Data In Messages
Head over to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Messages and check out how much storage space is being used up in different Message categories like Top Conversation and Videos. From here, you can decide what you want to keep and what you can do without (like GIFs and stickers, for example).
Auto Delete Messages
One way to consistently free up space without having to do any work at all is by setting your device to automatically delete messages. Go to Settings > Messages and under Message History click on Keep Messages and choose either 30 Days or 1 Year to decide when your phone can auto delete messages.
Turn Off Photo Streaming
Photo streaming is a feature that takes the last 1,000 photos from all of your devices from the last 30 days and syncs them. This results in your having duplicates of images that you don’t need and that take up storage space on your device. Turn the feature off by going to Settings > Photos and toggling off Upload to My Photo Stream.
