It’s always right when you’re about to snap the prettiest sunset that you get that soul-crushing alert telling you you’re outta storage. But I paid extra for 64 gigs, you think, as you curse Apple and your iPhone and technology in general.
Before you start panic-deleting pics, try these eight speedy tricks for freeing up space on your phone fast.
That ongoing text chain with your sister? Delete it. It’s probably hogging at least a GB of space on your iPhone. (If you’re running iOS 8, there’s a trick: Change your iPhone’s settings by going to Settings > Messages > Message History and set to Keep Messages for 30 days.
And any other old, time-sucking apps you no longer use.
Sure, it’s great that this tool automatically syncs your last 1,000 photos to other devices (like your iPad), but there’s a catch: It also duplicates them so they’re stored on your iPhone twice. This means they use double the storage. Turn it off by going to Settings > Photos & Camera and switching My Photo Stream off. Then download a free storage app, like Dropbox, to save your pics.
We love HDR mode, too, but unless you adjust your settings, your iPhone automatically saves both the normal and high res versions of every single picture. There’s a quick fix: Go to Settings > Photos & Camera and deselect Keep Normal Photo to be sure you’re saving only the best quality pic.
Yep, those al fresco brunch places you researched last May are still there, lurking in your browser history and killing your available space. There’s an easy way to clear it: Just go to Settings > Safari > Clear History and Website Data.
When was the last time you queued up that Grease Megamix? If there’s a song (or playlist) you’re not listening to, find it, swipe right to left and remove it from your phone.
You finished Serial months ago (you’re still not sure if he did it) and it's time to move on, especially since old podcasts take up a ton of room. Go to Settings > Podcasts and switch Delete Played Episodes on to remove all already-listened-to podcasts at once.
Sometimes, there’s one specific app that’s eating up your data. Find out the culprit by going to Settings > General > Usage, then click Manage Storage. There, you'll see an app by app list of what's taking up room. We know, reality bytes.
