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. Show But for now, if your phone is running dangerously low on space, fear not: here's how to clear storage on iPhone. How to find out how much space you have left on an iPhoneThe 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. Tap "iPhone Storage."Stefan Ionescu/Insider4. 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 graph will reveal how much storage space is left.Stefan Ionescu/Insider5. 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. Tap on a recommendation to see suggestions for freeing up space.Stefan Ionescu/InsiderHow to free up space on iPhoneAfter 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 appsNon-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. Tap "iPhone Storage."Stefan Ionescu/Insider4. 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. Look at "Last Used" below an app.Stefan Ionescu/Insider6. 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. Choose to either "Offload App" or "Delete App."Stefan Ionescu/Insider
Remove or optimize excess iPhone photosTo 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. Tap "Formats."Stefan Ionescu/Insider3. Make sure that the camera capture mode is set to High Efficiency. If not, tap on it. Make sure there's a blue checkmark next to "High Efficiency."Stefan Ionescu/InsiderDelete musicIf 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. Tap "iPhone Storage."Stefan Ionescu/Insider4. 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. Tap the music app.Stefan Ionescu/Insider5. 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. Quick tip: If you keep downloaded tracks in other music apps, like Spotify, you will need to open that app and remove them from there. Clear Safari's cacheYour 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. Tap "Safari."Stefan Ionescu/Insider3. Tap Clear History and Website Data. Tap "Clear History and Website Data."Stefan Ionescu/Insider4. Tap Clear History and Data in the pop-up. Clear Safari's history and data.Stefan Ionescu/InsiderDelete old messagesMessages 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. Tap "Messages."Stefan Ionescu/Insider3. Tap Keep Messages. Tap "Keep Messages."Stefan Ionescu/Insider/Insider4. On the next screen, tap either 30 Days or 1 Year to keep the messages for that specific time before they're deleted. Choose to keep messages for 30 days, a year, or forever.Stefan Ionescu/Insider5. 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. Dave Johnson Freelance Writer Dave Johnson is a technology journalist who writes about consumer tech and how the industry is transforming the speculative world of science fiction into modern-day real life. Dave grew up in New Jersey before entering the Air Force to operate satellites, teach space operations, and do space launch planning. He then spent eight years as a content lead on the Windows team at Microsoft. As a photographer, Dave has photographed wolves in their natural environment; he's also a scuba instructor and co-host of several podcasts. Dave is the author of more than two dozen books and has contributed to many sites and publications including CNET, Forbes, PC World, How To Geek, and Insider. Read more Read lessWe may receive a commission when you buy through our links, but our reporting and recommendations are always independent and objective. Can you increase the GB on an iPhone?You Can't Upgrade iPhone Memory
The question about upgrading iPhone storage is unfortunately easy to answer: It's not possible to upgrade iPhone memory capacity.
How do I add 128 GB to my iPhone?Phones cannot be upgraded to add storage. You'll need to get a new phone with more storage. Phones cannot be upgraded to add storage. No you cannot buy more storage space for the phone.
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