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It’s so common – yet so frustrating: you may not be sure what to do when that little message pops up on your iPhone letting you know you’re almost out of storage.
Here’s what not to do: don’t panic. There’s a solution for that.
More so than ever before, one of the biggest culprits behind loss of data is iMessages. This is the surprising iMessage setting that destroys your iPhone’s storage.
If you do a quick check in iMessages you may be shocked to learn that those text exchanges add up fast. And we aren’t just storing verbal exchanges, we are sharing images and videos with friends and family - files that take up a lot of storage space.
You may be thinking: sure, I need note storage space, but I also really need most of my texts. Deleting them will obviously help with storage, but it is not the only way out.
According to Apple Tool Box:
"For those of you who have messages that you absolutely need to save, I have a couple of suggestions:
Create a backup of your iPhone to save those very important messages (VIMs)
Take screenshots of your VIMs by pressing the power and home buttons at the same time
There’s an app for that of course! So try our PhoneView, iExplorer, or TouchCopy to archive your messages."
Another temporary solution is to save your text messages to iPhoto by taking a screenshot of the most important texts and saving them to your photo app. This will help you keep part of them secure, while still being able to delete the message thread that is taking up storage space.
If honing in on iMessages is not solving your storage dilemma, do this to see if this app is even a problem. To check how much storage iMessages is using:
Go to Settings > General
For iOS 11 and above choose iPhone (or iPad) Storage
For iOS 10 and below see Storage & iCloud Usage. Tap Manage Storage
If your available storage is under 10GB, its time to get cracking on finding out which other apps are taking up space (and it’s never a bad idea to start with a Facebook).
