How to clear space on iPhone

+79 votes
asked Apr 3, 2019 in Science by FelixMcDavid (460 points)
edited Apr 13, 2019
My iPhone now has an annoying habit of a pop up that tells me I do not have any space for storage. Who knows how I can manage these annoying pop ups and how to clear space on iPhone?

2 Answers

+25 votes
answered Aug 11, 2019 by Tommy08G4679 (390 points)
edited Aug 14, 2019

The space is never enough for me as well, even when I have a 64G one. LOL. Thus, I searched every way I can to leave enough space on my iPhone. Here are methods that I found useful to solve the problem how to clear space on iPhone.

1. Delete every unnecessary app

If you find any App you hardly use, delete it without a second thought. It is as simple as that. Even the Apps you paid for can be retrieved through iCloud. Also beware of game Apps, for all game Apps could range between 500MB and IGB in capacity. Science and history Apps come with fancy 3D pictures. So make sure you check every game App on your iOS device and delete whatever you do not use. This will require tapping and holding the App icon until it starts juggling, you then tap lightly at the X icon at the corner.

2. Delete books and videos

Every 2 hour HD video or movie can occupy about 3.5 GB disk space. Go to your Video gallery, tap the edit icon on the right corner. Every video on your video App will have an X icon appear beside it. Tap the X icon to delete any video you wish to delete.

Repeat this procedure for all your iBooks. As a matter of fact, some recent eBooks come with videos and fancy graphics entrenched in them. Most reference books are mostly guilty of this. So move into the iBooks section and choose the select icon, then select any unwanted eBook by clicking on them before tapping the delete icon.

You can easily download your videos and eBooks again when you need them. All it takes is a tap of the button.

3. Set your messages on auto delete

To set up your iPhone in a way that your old messages will be auto-deleted, follow the procedure below.

Go to the settings, click on messages. Under the messages, click on keep messages and choose 30 days or 1 year. You can also set all video and audio messages to automatically expire within 2 minutes.

If you wish to delete a whole thread, simply click on messages, swipe left on the thread and tap delete. But make sure that all photos you still wish to keep have been saved before clicking on delete.

4. Delete all voicemail messages

To delete Visual Voicemails individually, open the Phone App and tap the Voicemail Button. Locate the voicemail you wish to delete before swiping left on it, and then hit the red icon to delete.

5. Clear caches from your browser

If you make use of safari most often, all data and web history may be stored on your iPhone even when you do not need them. To get the Safari browser's cache, open the settings App, tap the safari, scroll down to clear website data and history. If your browser is Chrome, open the Chrome App, hit the menu icon at the upper right hand side (3 vertical dots). Click on history, scroll down and hit the clear browsing data icon.


Here are all the ways that I have used considering how to clear space on iPhone. I know you would reach a point when you have deleted every last photo or video you don’t want, and there is still not enough space. Maybe then you should consider buy an iPad to share part of the functions of your iPhone. ;)

+10 votes
answered Apr 25, 2019 by CerysMilne53 (340 points)
edited Jul 6, 2019

Nice advice! But except deleting all the things you don’t need, you can also save space by not saving a same doc twice! IPhone has been doing this in some apps.

1. Save HDR photos only

Most iPhone users do not know that for each photo click, two images are saved instead of one. This means your iPhone storage gets filled up twice as fast. When you take a shot with your iPhone, the HDR feature combines 3 images from 3 exposures to give you one perfect picture. Both the original HDR image and the non-HDR image are saved automatically. This is the trick behind the two images. In order to deactivate this feature, go to your iPhone settings, tap photos and cameras, toggle the keep normal photos icon, and tap the off option.

2. Look out for all newsstand apps

Newsstand App is the dedicated folder from Apple which houses all digital magazine subscription for you. With some magazines, only the last 2 or 3 editions are saved, while some stores all editions forever. The London Metro Paper is one good example. Check your Newsstand App to see if any magazine is storing all editions on your iPhone.

3. Stop the use of photo stream

Your last 1, 000 photos are automatically synchronized by your phone photo stream across your iOS storage device. This means it stores about 1, 000 photos twice, and each 1,000 photos occupies about 1GB disk space. So if you do not need to send your photos to your iPhone from your iPad regularly, keep it turned off.

How to turn it off: go to settings, scroll to photos and cameras and toggle off my photo.

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