If you've owned your iPhone for a long time, you know the f when you're about to snap a photo, download an app or update your phone, when suddenly a notification pops up warning you that your iPhone storage is almost full. Maybe you've frantically tried to figure out how to free up as much space as possible without just nuking everything.
But don't panic. There are several ways to regain storage space from your iPhone that don't involve starting from scratch. From offloading apps to using the cloud, we've compiled a helpful list of ways to help you make more room on your iPhone and manage your storage in a smarter, more efficient way.
How to check what's taking up the most storage
Before you do any serious iPhone excavation, it's best to find out just what is taking up so much space in it. To do so, go to Settings, then General and then select iPhone Storage. You'll then see a colored bar chart breaking down the types of files and media that are on your phone. This is a great starting point because it'll tell you which type of storage is taking up the most space and you can choose to tackle that first.
Additionally, Apple also makes recommendations in this section to help you free up more space, such as reviewing downloaded media or removing automatic downloads in podcast apps.
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Deleting or offloading apps you don't use much
The aforementioned iPhone Storage page will also list apps according to how much space they take up in your phone. It'll also tell you the last time you used it. You can scroll through this list to see if you should be deleting any of the apps that you haven't used in a while. You can delete them manually and redownload them later if you change your mind.
An easier way to handle this, however, is to have your iPhone automatically remove unused apps. On that iPhone Storage page, you can tap Enable next to Offload Unused Apps. Those unused apps will live on iCloud Drive (you can find them in the Files app). If you want to use them again, simply tap them (they'll be marked with a cloud symbol) and they'll be redownloaded.
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