How to free up space on iPhone

You have been an iPhone user for some time and you can feel more than satisfied with the choice made. However, there is one thing that is causing you some problems and that you would like to try to cope with: the lack of free space available to store data and apps.

How do you say? Things are exactly like this and would you like to understand if I can help you? Well, of course yes, don’t worry. In fact, with today’s guide I will explain how to free up space on the iPhone quickly and effectively, without necessarily giving up your most important data and without making a mess.

What do you need to proceed? Basically, your iPhone and some free time. If you have the computer with which you usually synchronize your phone at hand, then, you may be able to gain a few more MB of space. So, ready to go? Perfect. I wish you a good read and I wish you a big good luck for everything!

Index

• How to free up space on iPhone: app and system
  • Manage installed apps
  • How to free up space on iPhone: More
• How to free up space on iPhone with iCloud
• How to free up space on iPhone with iTunes
• How to free up space on iPhone: WhatsApp

How to free up space on iPhone: app and system

Let’s start this journey by analyzing some techniques to free up some space occupied by the apps and system components of the iPhone.

Manage installed apps

The first aspect on which to intervene is certainly that relating to apps which, at times, can really occupy hundreds and hundreds of MB, in a completely unexpected way!

To view the list of applications in order of space occupied, open the Settings of the “iPhone by tapping the resident gear symbol on the home screen or in the App Library, reach the General> iPhone Space sections and examine the list of listed applications,” with relative occupied space.

Now, if you see a cumbersome app that you no longer use, tap on its name and, to decide what to delete, take a look at the app size and those of documents and data : contrary to what you might think, there are extremely bulky in terms of space (like GarageBand, for example), which only store a few MB of data!

If, based on your analysis, you believe it is appropriate to delete only the application (but leaving the data in the phone’s memory unchanged), tap the Remove app only button twice in a row; by doing so, if you decide to reinstall the application at a later time, you will find its data unchanged the next time you log in.

If, on the other hand, you want to apply a more drastic solution and delete both the application files and the related data (which, I warn you, will then be irrecoverable ), tap on the Delete app item twice in a row and that’s it.

How to free up space on iPhone: More

Have you visited the Settings> General> iPhone Space menu of iOS and have you realized, by examining the bar indicating the space occupied, that a good “slice” of storage is occupied by the Other category? Don’t worry, it’s normal. In fact, it collects everything that is not in the other categories listed: system files and iOS updates, user settings and operating system and application cache.

Although most of the items belonging to the Other category cannot be touched, it is possible to intervene, where possible, on the cache. For example, you will be pleased to know that there are applications that allow you to automatically empty your cache at startup, although not many.

To check if the app you are interested in has this feature, go to the Settings of the “iPhone by”, tap on the name of the app you are interested in and, if you see an option called Clean at startup, move the relative lever from OFF to ON.

In addition, the Other category also contains the cache of the Safari browser and all the other navigation apps installed on the “iPhone by” and the positive news is that you can delete this data very easily!

In the case of Safari, you have to go to the Settings> Safari> Advanced> Website data menu, press the Remove all website data item located at the bottom of the next panel and confirm your willingness to proceed by touching the Remove now item.

The same operation can also be performed in many other browsers available for iOS, directly from their settings. Let me explain how to operate on the most commonly used ones.

• Google Chrome: tap the button (…) visible at the bottom right, go to the Settings> Privacy> Clear browsing data menu, put the check mark only next to the item Cached images and files (unless you want delete other categories of data as well) and press the Clear browsing data button twice consecutively.
• Mozilla Firefox: touch the ☰ button located at the bottom right, open the Settings> Data management menu, move only the lever relating to the Cache item to ON (leaving all the others on OFF, unless you decide to also delete additional elements ) and press the Delete personal data and OK buttons.
• Microsoft Edge: tap the button (…) located at the bottom, tap the Settings button attached to the menu that appears and open the Privacy and security sections > Clear browsing data. Finally, put the check mark exclusively next to the Cache item (unless you want to get rid of other data as well) and touch the items Clear browsing data and OK, to conclude.

Keep in mind that, if you decide to also delete the browser history and other browsing data and the data synchronization via the cloud is active, you will delete the selected information not only from the iPhone but also from all devices connected to the same account.

How to free up space on iPhone with iCloud

Apple’s online storage system, iCloud, can be a valuable ally in terms of memory saving: thanks to the iCloud Photo and iCloud Drive services, in fact, it is possible to store photos, videos and even data from compatible applications on the Internet, so quick and easy.

Before proceeding, keep in mind that the data stored by the apps erodes the space available on iCloud: in order to avoid quickly saturating the amount of storage offered for free by Apple (and equal to 5 GB), you may have to purchase one or more paid packages for expand the space at your disposal, with prices starting from € 0.99 / month for 50 GB.

Having said that, the iCloud Photos service allows you to automatically archive the photos and videos present in the iOS camera roll on the Internet, in their original format; the files are still available also in the iPhone memory but, by enabling the specific function, they can be saved in reduced quality (with considerable savings in terms of space). High quality files are always available on iCloud.com.

To activate the iCloud Photos service and the space optimization function, open the iPhone Settings, tap on your name and then on the iCloud and Photos items; Finally, move the switch Photo iCloud on ON (if necessary) and affix a check mark next to Optimize iPhone space.

iCloud Drive, on the other hand, allows you to keep data from numerous commonly used apps integrated with the storage service made in Apple, such as the default ones Pages, Notes, GarageBand etc. but also those of third parties, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and so on. To activate it, open the Settings menu > [your name]> iCloud of iOS, move the lever corresponding to the iCloud Drive item to ON and make sure that the switches corresponding to the apps you want to keep data in the cloud (and not in memory) are set to ON, otherwise do it yourself.

For completeness of information, I would like to point out that there are alternative services to iCloud (such as Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox ), which allow you to automatically upload photos, videos and other data on the Net; although they obviously have a lower level of integration with the iPhone operating system. For more information, I invite you to read my guide dedicated to the best cloud services.

How to free up space on iPhone with iTunes

Haven’t you found the information I’ve given you so far useful, since you can’t (or don’t want to) use the iCloud Photos service and would you rather store the images on your computer rather than on the Net?

In this case, the iTunes for Windows program may come in handy, together with the image and video import function included in the Microsoft operating system: once the Apple program has been installed and the “iPhone by pairing” to the computer, it is possible to transfer all the photos and videos from a smartphone to PC, in just a couple of clicks. Please note that, if yours is a Mac, you can also do the same operation from the Photos application for macOS.

If you have not yet downloaded and configured iTunes on Windows, or if you have never connected your iPhone to your Mac before, I invite you to read my guide on how to connect iPhone to iTunes, in which I have given you all the appropriate instructions.

Once the phone is paired with the computer, if your computer has Windows, open the File Explorer, select the item This PC from the left sidebar, right-click on the iPhone icon and choose the Import images item and video from the menu that appears. To immediately copy all the files to the Windows Pictures folder, press the Import all new items now and Import buttons.

If, on the other hand, yours is a Mac, after connecting iPhone to the computer, open the Photos application on the latter, click on the Import tab and wait for the list of multimedia elements present in the iPhone memory to be shown. If you want to automatically delete imported photos from your phone, put the checkmark next to Delete items after import.

Finally, click on the Import all new photos / new items button located at the top right, in order to start transferring the images to the Mac memory.

If you have any doubts about the steps just seen, or if you want to know more about the various procedures that can be followed to transfer photos (and videos) from iPhone to PC and transfer photos (and videos) from iPhone to Mac, I refer you to reading the my guides dedicated to the subject.

Note: in some cases, leaving the iPhone connected to iTunes or to the macOS Finder for a few minutes, a sort of “automatic cleaning” of the Other folder is performed, with a consequent decrease in its size. It is a procedure that is sometimes successful and sometimes not, it almost seems like an urban legend… but, if the situation is really desperate, it’s worth a try!

How to free up space on iPhone: WhatsApp

If you are particularly active on WhatsApp, it is very likely that a large part of the space available on your iPhone is occupied by the multimedia elements received and sent through the messaging application: between videos, photos and voice notes, the Mega occupied accumulate over time, becoming Giga and causing some headaches too many.

To analyze and manage the data stored by WhatsApp, open the messaging app in question, tap the Settings button located at the bottom right and select the items Space and data> Manage space from the next panel, in order to access the list of the chats stored on the device, in descending order by space occupied (from the most “bulky” to the “smallest”).

Now, locate the conversation to intervene on, tap on the Select item located at the top right and put the check mark next to the thumbnails of the multimedia elements to be deleted, or tap the Select all button to select all the multimedia elements. Finally, press the trash can icon located at the bottom right and tap on Delete item (s) and any copies from the panel that appears later.

However, keep in mind that WhatsApp photos and videos, in some cases, may still remain in the iPhone photo gallery: to get rid of them, start the “iPhone by phone” Photos app, touch the Albums tab and open the WhatsApp one; then, tap the Select button located at the top right, touch the thumbnails of the items you want to get rid of, then tap the trash can icon and press the Delete and Delete photos/videos / [X] items buttons that appear later. For more information, you can take a look at my guide on how to clean up WhatsApp, in which I dealt with the subject in great detail.