It is important to keep iPhone and iPad clean and organized so that we can store everything we need. Sometimes the available storage space drops drastically, so the device is more likely to show the “Storage almost full” warning. Something that fortunately we can avoid very easily.
Before deciding to buy a new iPhone 14 yellow with more capacity, we must have several resources to keep our devices free of data that we do not need. From deleting apps to clearing some caches, there’s a lot we can do.
Let’s check the available disk space first
First, let’s talk about how much space we have available. We can check this by opening the Settings app and going to General > [iPhone/iPad] Storage. Above we see a chart that shows us by color what is more busy in our iPhone or iPad.
Used space on iPhone
In general, if more than 75% of the available space is occupied, it is reason enough to consider cleaning. In fact, purification does not necessarily mean that we lose information.
Let’s look at the apps we don’t use
Right on the screen we’re on right now, below is a list of the applications that are taking up the most space. It will always be better to direct our attention to one at the top of the list than 10 of those at the bottom. So if we spot an app that we don’t use, we can just tap on it and then tap Delete app to reclaim the storage space.
And let’s also look at the information contained in it
Just as we just eliminated the apps we don’t use, in the list we find apps that we use but that take up more space than they should. Take the Twitter app for example. This will collect a cache of items that we’ve seen, so we don’t have to download them again if we want to see them again.
Disk space used by the Podcasts app
Clearing this cache does not mean that we will lose anything, but it does mean that we will regain a lot of disk space. Here the recommendation – with a backup of all the information we want to save – is to delete the app and download it again from the App Store immediately. Alternatively, if we are talking about apps of the likes of Telegram or WhatsApp, for example, we can use their own cache and memory management tools to free up space on our iPhone or iPad.
The same applies to the music. From the same information tab that we are in, we can tap on the Music app and then swipe left on any artist to delete the downloaded music.
Messages and Safari also take up its size
The Messages app and Safari are two other applications that can take up more space than we might expect. In the Messages app, fixing this problem is as simple as opening the same application and deleting the conversations that we no longer need. Especially those that contain a lot of videos or photos. If we want, in Settings> Messages> Keep messages we can select 30 days or 1 year for Messages to delete conversations older than this period.
Messages app auto-delete settings
Safari, on the other hand, can also take up significant storage space with its browser cache. Clearing the cache is as simple as going to Settings > Safari and tapping on Clear History and Website Data. However, note that we will need to log in again on the sites that require it.
It’s always a good idea to upgrade
Finally, it’s always a good idea to keep your iPhone or iPad up to date. Updates are downloaded to the device, ready to be installed, which occupies its own storage space. Once installed, this space becomes free and we also enjoy more functionality and, above all, more security.
Just like the list of the nine essential iPhone shortcuts, the list of recommendations could be continued by going to Settings > Photos, for example, enabling Photos in iCloud so that our photos and videos are stored in the cloud, and then enabling Optimize Storage so that they take up no space on our device. And we could go on, but the truth is that with the steps we’ve just seen, we can easily and in many cases reclaim a lot of disk space without giving up any data.
Architect | Creator and publisher of hoyenapple.com | Formador en tecnologias Apple | Editor in Softonic and iDoo_tech and Ex-Editor in Applesfera | Twitter: @david_br8
