From the moment you realize your phone is running out of storage space, it can feel like a race to restore space. You may absentmindedly begin deleting photos, videos, texts, and emails — even data you may regret getting rid of later on — all in an effort to ensure your phone is able to download apps and programs, take photos, and do all of the other tasks required of it. But few good things come out of acting in haste where your phone is concerned. A better method is a little good old-fashioned planning — and having a few secret hacks in your back pocket that tech experts count on for saving so much storage.
Photos and videos are one of the biggest storage consumers on your device, so it makes sense that changing the way you store your media files will matter.
“There are a few different ways to save storage space on an iPhone (or other apple device), particularly when it comes to photos and videos as they take up an enormous amount of storage capacity space on the drive,” says Jim Costa, a photographer, video producer, YouTuber and technology pro. “Videos, in particular, are large files and use even more space. Photos and videos are stored on your device in their original, high-resolution version. As such, videos may be in 4K resolution and photos can be in HDR and JPEG format.”
Avoid the frustration of dealing with a last-minute low-storage scenario — Costa offers three hacks that can help.
Hack 1: Store Media in iCloud
You’ll want to start by checking how much available storage you have on you device, Costa advises. To do so, follow these steps:
**Go to Settings > General > Tap (Device Type) Storage
** If your device is nearly full, you should then consider saving your photos and videos to iCloud. Apple provides all iCloud users with 5GB of free storage when you sign up, but they do offer other plans up to 2TB of storage for a monthly fee.
** To begin to store your images and videos in the cloud:
** Go to Settings > (Your Name) > iCloud > Photos
** Turn on iCloud Photos
**Select Optimize iPhone Storage
“What this will do is keep smaller, space saving pics and vids on the device, but save origin, full-resolution version to iCloud,” Costa says. “Provided you have sufficient iCloud space, you can store as many photos and videos as you like.”
Hack 2: Capture Low-Resolution Video
If iCloud isn’t your thing, Costa recommends saving space by capturing video in a lower resolution. To do so he provides these steps:
**Go to Settings > Camera > Record Video and select a lower resolution or Settings > Camera > Record Slo-Mo and select 1080p HD at 120 FPS
** One minute of video saved in 4K resolution at 60 FPS is about 440 MB while a minute of video at 72-p HD at 30 FPS is only about 45 MB, using about 1/10th of the space.
Hack 3: Delete Duplicate Images
“If you have the newest iPhone iOS 16 on your device, you can delete duplicate images to open up storage,” Costa says.
To do so:
** Go to Settings > Photos > Albums > Utilities > Duplicates
** From here, you’ll see the duplicate matches and and option to Merge them. Next tap Merge to delete duplicate photos.
** To go through your duplicates faster, choose Select in the top right corner to choose multiple photos at once. You can even Select All to merge all of the duplicate photos iOS 16 detects. Remember that this only works for the latest iOS.
