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6 ways to free up storage space on your iPhone

apple smart phone iphone 11 pro
Freeing up space on your iPhone can make it run more efficiently and faster. Crystal Cox/Business Insider

  • You can free up space on an iPhone by deleting apps, photos, and videos.
  • To free more space on your iPhone, clear Safari's cache and delete old messages.
  • To see how much storage space is left, head to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
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The next time you upgrade your iPhone, you may never have to worry about running out of space again, thanks to the gargantuan capacities available in new models.

But for now, if your phone is running dangerously low on space, fear not: here's how to clear storage on iPhone.

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How to find out how much space you have left on an iPhone

The first thing you need to do is determine exactly how much space you have left.

1. Open the Settings app.

2. Tap General.

3. Tap iPhone Storage.

The General settings on iPhone, with the “iPhone Storage” option highlighted.
Tap "iPhone Storage." Stefan Ionescu/Insider

4. You may need to wait a few moments, but you should see a graph at the top of the screen displaying how much free space you have and what's using up your memory (media files, apps, photos, and so on).

The “iPhone Storage” settings on iPhone, with a graph showing the remaining storage space and what’s eating it up.
The graph will reveal how much storage space is left. Stefan Ionescu/Insider

5. Under the Recommendations header, you'll see suggestions on how to make more storage on iPhone. Tap on a suggestion to see what Apple recommends.

The “iPhone Storage” settings on iPhone, with the “Recommendations” section highlighted.
Tap on a recommendation to see suggestions for freeing up space. Stefan Ionescu/Insider
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How to free up space on iPhone

After seeing how much storage space you have left and what's taking up the most space on your iPhone, it's time to take the necessary action to free some of it.

Delete non-essential apps

Non-essential apps are those that you hardly use and can probably do without. You can single them out on the iPhone Storage screen.

1. Open the Settings app.

2. Tap General.

3. Tap iPhone Storage.

The General settings on iPhone, with the “iPhone Storage” option highlighted.
Tap "iPhone Storage." Stefan Ionescu/Insider

4. Wait for the apps to load below the graph showing you how much storage space you have left. Once they do, the apps will be listed from the biggest to the smallest in terms of size.

5. Below an app's name, look at Last Used to see which apps you haven't used in a while.

The “iPhone Storage” settings on iPhone, with “Last Used” highlighted below one of the apps to show when the user last used it.
Look at "Last Used" below an app. Stefan Ionescu/Insider

6. If it's been a while since you last used the app and it's taking up too much space, tap it to see the app's size and how much data it's storing on your iPhone.

7. Choose whether to delete the app and all of its data or just offload the app from the iPhone temporarily.

An app’s storage settings on iPhone, with the “Offload App” and “Delete App” buttons showing.
Choose to either "Offload App" or "Delete App." Stefan Ionescu/Insider
  • Offload App removes the app from your phone but leaves all of its data behind. If you reinstall it later, the data will still be there and you can continue using it normally. This is a good option if you plan to use the app again later, and the app itself is very large but the data takes up very little space. A good example of this is Google Maps — the app is about 124MB, but its data is probably just a few megabytes.
  • Delete App deletes the app and all of its data. This is a good choice if the app's data is much larger than the app itself, so there's little advantage to deleting just the app — like Spotify, if you download a lot of music, or the Music app itself.
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Remove or optimize excess iPhone photos

To optimize your photos on iPhone 7 or later, you can enable High Efficiency mode for the pictures you take with your camera. 

The image quality won't be affected, but each photo will take significantly less space to store. This might be turned on already, but it bears double-checking.

1. Open the Settings app.

2. Tap Camera

3. Tap Formats.

The Camera settings on iPhone, with the “Formats” option highlighted.
Tap "Formats." Stefan Ionescu/Insider

3. Make sure that the camera capture mode is set to High Efficiency. If not, tap on it.

The “Formats” settings page on iPhone, with the “High Efficiency” option highlighted.
Make sure there's a blue checkmark next to "High Efficiency." Stefan Ionescu/Insider
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Delete music

If you store a lot of music on your iPhone, you can recover a lot of space by pruning your library.

1. Open the Settings app.

2. Tap General

3. Tap iPhone Storage.

The General settings on iPhone, with the “iPhone Storage” option highlighted.
Tap "iPhone Storage." Stefan Ionescu/Insider

4. Find the Music app in the list — if you have a large digital music library, there's a good chance it'll be at the top of the list — and tap it.

The “iPhone Storage” settings on iPhone, with the list of apps showing beneath the graph and the “Recommendations” section.
Tap the music app. Stefan Ionescu/Insider

5. Swipe left on an artist you wish to remove from your phone and tap Delete. Or you can tap the artists to delete specific albums or even individual tracks. You can see how much space all of these songs take, making it easier to choose. You can also tap Edit and remove multiple artists at once.

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Clear Safari's cache

Your web browser's cache could be taking up a lot of space — all those temporary internet files add up. 

If you clear your cache, be warned that you'll be logged out of any websites you are signed into, and all your cookies will be deleted. But this can save you dozens of megabytes.

1. Open the Settings app.

2. Tap Safari.

The Settings app on iPhone, with the “Safari” option highlighted.
Tap "Safari." Stefan Ionescu/Insider

3. Tap Clear History and Website Data.

Safari settings on iPhone, with the “Clear History and Website Data” option highlighted.
Tap "Clear History and Website Data." Stefan Ionescu/Insider

4. Tap Clear History and Data in the pop-up.

The pop-up that appears when clearing Safari’s cache on iPhone.
Clear Safari's history and data. Stefan Ionescu/Insider
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Delete old messages

Messages generally won't take up a lot of space unless you have a lot of texts with images attached. 

But if every megabyte counts, you can manually delete messages or entire conversations. And you can change your iPhone's settings to automatically delete older texts after a month or a year.

1. Open the Settings app.

2. Tap Messages.

The Settings app on iPhone, with the “Messages” option highlighted.
Tap "Messages." Stefan Ionescu/Insider

3. Tap Keep Messages.

The “Messages” settings on iPhone, with the “Keep Messages” option highlighted.
Tap "Keep Messages." Stefan Ionescu/Insider/Insider

4. On the next screen, tap either 30 Days or 1 Year to keep the messages for that specific time before they're deleted.

The “Keep Messages” screen on iPhone.
Choose to keep messages for 30 days, a year, or forever. Stefan Ionescu/Insider

5. You'll see a pop-up asking if you want to delete messages that are older 30 days or one year, depending on what you chose. Tap Delete to get rid of them or Cancel to keep them.

We may receive a commission when you buy through our links, but our reporting and recommendations are always independent and objective.

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