How to free iPhone storage with these tips

People often fill up their storage space on iPhone, however, it can be freed up by deleting apps and offloading photos and videos to free iPhone storage. As iPhones do not offer expandable storage, users have to rely on the tools that Apple offers in iOS which can help with regaining storage space.

Here are a few tips that users can follow which should help free iPhone storage.

How to free iPhonr storage with these tips

How to free iPhone storage

Here are some tips that you can follow to free iPhone storage:

Clear browser cache

iPhone may store web history data that users simply do not require if they are using Safari often. To clear Safari’s browser cache:

  1. Open up Settings
  2. Tap Safari
  3. Scroll down and tap Clear History and Website Data

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If someone uses Chrome more than Safari, then they can:

  1. Open up Google Chrome
  2. Tap the triple-dot button on the top right corner
  3. Tap History
  4. At the bottom, tap Clear Browsing Data

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Delete downloaded podcasts

Just like music, users may have a number of podcasts downloaded on their iPhones. If you use the original Podcasts app then it is easy to delete your downloads.

  1. Open Settings
  2. Go to General
  3. Then go to Storage & iCloud Usage
  4. Afterward, Manage Storage and tap Podcasts

How to free iPhone storage with these tips

Unfortunately, there is not a way to delete all of the podcasts at once so you will have to go down the list and delete each podcast separately.

Delete downloaded music

The songs that users listen to are often downloaded and begin to add up. If you use Apple Music, you can simply:

  1. Go to Settings
  2. Then, General
  3. Then go to Storage & iCloud Usage
  4. Then, Manage Storage
  5. Find Apple Music on the list and you can delete the songs individually or you can clear them altogether from the top

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Offload unused apps

There are two ways to offload apps; manually or automatically. If you prefer to automatically remove unused apps, then:

  1. Open Settings > General > iPhone Storage
  2. Scroll down to find Offload Unused Apps
  3. Tap on Enable

offload unused apps

To manually offload apps, scroll down and tap on any app. Tap on ‘Enable‘ when you see the offload option.

Stop Photo Stream

The photos in Photo Stream take up quite a lot of space, but not as much as the original photos. Because these are uploaded to the iPhone at a ‘device-optimized resolution’, these photos are not of any use since they are duplicates of the original ones.

To turn the Photo Stream off:

  1. Open Settings
  2. Go to Photos & Camera
  3. Toggle off Upload to My Photo Stream

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Upon doing this, the photos will disappear from your iPhone, however, they will remain on other devices like iPad or Mac where Photo Stream might be enabled. These photos also remain on the iCloud account for 30 days from the date they were uploaded.

Do not double save photos

In case someone uses iPhone’s HDR very often or uses Instagram or Snapchat, then they might have noticed that the iPhone saves two photos; the normal version or filtered/HDR version.

To make this stop:

  1. Open Settings
  2. Go to Photos & Camera
  3. Scroll to the bottom and disable the toggle next to Keep Normal Photo

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To do the same thing for Instagram photos

  1. Open Instagram
  2. Tap your Profile
  3. Tap Settings
  4. Disable the toggle next to Save Original Photos

Stop storing text messages

By default, iPhones save all of the text messages that are received or sent. This is helpful if someone wants to look up an old conversation, but it is not so convenient if you need to work with that storage space.

  1. Open Settings
  2. Tap Messages
  3. Scroll down to find Message History, and then tap Keep Messages
  4. Change Forever to 30 Days or 1 Year
  5. A pop-up will ask to confirm the action, simple tap Delete and proceed

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We hope this guide helps you to free iPhone storage. 

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About the Author

Usman has been playing games for as long as he can remember. He is an editor at iThinkDifferent and writes about games, Apple news, hardware, productivity guides, and more. When not writing for iTD, Usman loves to play competitive Team Fortress 2, spends time honing his football skills, and watches superhero movies.

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