It’s a familiar scene — you’re about to board a five-hour flight and frantically downloading music from Spotify or movies from Netflix, when suddenly your iPhone flashes: “iPhone Storage Full.” You pause to consider whether you want to delete your child’s music recital so you can watch 3 Body Problem.
Before deleting anything, you can and should take advantage of certain iOS features to free up storage space on your iPhone.
There are two built-in iOS settings that can help clear up a significant amount of storage on your iPhone — one permanent and one temporary — so you can install the latest software updates, take more photos and videos, and download more apps. Here’s what you need to know.
If you want more tips on how to get more iPhone storage, check it out how to free up space on your iPhone with these simple tricks and the best cloud storage options in 2024.
Optimize your iPhone photos and videos to free up storage space
If you want to keep your precious memories (even just screenshots of your memes), but still want to free up storage space, the easiest way is to optimize the photos and videos already stored on your device.
By default, every time you take a photo or video, they are saved in full resolution to your device. If you shoot photos and videos at the highest possible resolution, they can take up quite a bit of space. A minute of video recorded in 4K at 60 frames per second takes up approximately 400 MB — almost half a GB. That’s pretty significant.
To optimize your photos and videos, go to settings > Photos and turn on Optimize iPhone storage (for this to work you will need to have iCloud Photos setting above it enabled). Depending on how many photos and videos you have on your iPhone, this can take quite a while, but once it’s done, you should see significantly more storage space on your device.
You must have iCloud Photos turned on for this to work.
All of your full-resolution photos and videos are then transferred to your iCloud, while smaller, lower-resolution versions are kept on your device to take up less space. If you want to access your photos and videos in higher resolution, you can go to the Photos app and download any file that’s being optimized; this requires a decent internet connection. Your recently taken photos and videos can exist in full resolution, so you won’t have to download every photo or video.
If you don’t have enough iCloud storage, it’s easier to upgrade your cloud than to get a new phone. In the US, you can upgrade to 50GB for just a dollar a month, or you can go higher: 200GB for $3 a month or 2TB for $10 a month. Prices vary depending on your country or region.
To upgrade iCloud on your iPhone, go to settings > (your name) > iCloud > Account storage management > Buy more storage space. Choose a plan and follow the instructions. If you upgrade to any paid iCloud subscription, you’ll get access to iCloud+, which also offers iCloud Private Relay and Hide My Email features.
You can spend as little as $1 per month for more iCloud storage.
Spread out your biggest apps to save space on your iPhone
Don’t use every app stored on your iPhone. Many of them just stand there, like apps for your favorite airlines, third-party cameras, and music productions. Even if you use them occasionally, you probably don’t need daily access to most apps, which is why you should consider downloading apps in case you’re in desperate need of storage space.
Let’s say you want to download and install the latest iOS update. If it’s a big update, like iOS 16, you might need a little more than 5GB to install the software. If it’s a point update, like iOS 16.1, you’re looking at around 1GB. And if you don’t have enough storage space to update, you can quickly uninstall apps, which is a cross between keeping and deleting your apps.
To go settings > In general > iPhone storage and see which apps are taking up the most storage space. Certain built-in apps like Photos and Messages can’t be downloaded, so be warned. If you find a large app that you want to download, tap on it and press Unloading the application. Wait a while and the app should then be removed offline, while your documents and data will remain saved on your device.
You must double-tap Offload App to “delete” the app.
If you need temporary storage to download software, just go through the list and download every app you can. The amount released for each app will vary, but you should see a number next to it Application size. Discard the number next to Documents and data as it will remain on your device. The only way to get rid of it is to actually delete the app.
Load as many apps as you need until you run out of storage space. You can’t use an app that’s been downloaded, but if you want to restore an app, go to your app library and tap the iCloud button to download it again. If a downloaded app is on your home screen, simply tap on it to download it. You won’t have to sign in again or anything; you will have access to the application as if it had never been deleted.