The 7 things to delete first when your iPhone storage is full

There are two things your iPhone will run out of quickly: battery life and storage. 

 

Getting more power is easy — just get a battery case or a portable battery pack or turn on Low Poer Mode. Getting more storage isn't. What do you remove first?

 

Apple still selling 16GB iPhones (shame on them!), local storage is at a premium for a lot of people unless they pony up for the more expensive, higher-capacity models.

 

Storing your files in the cloud is one way to free up storage on your iPhone, but it means you'll only be able to access your files when you're connected to the internet. It also means you'll have to pay for that storage.

 

To get back space on your phone, it means you'll need to get rid of some stuff. But don't worry — if you do it smart, you'll barely notice what you've deleted. Here are seven things things you should toss out if you need to free up even more space.

 

 

Removing photos from your iPhone is one of the simplest things to do to free up storage. And you can make sure you don't permanently lose anything by either downloading photos manually to your computer or backing them up to the cloud. Google Photos is a great free service that lets you back up all your iPhone photos at full resolution and videos at up to 1080p resolution. 

 

If you need help with Google Photos, you can read our How to get all of your photos into Google Photos story to get started.

 

But if you don't want to keep many photos on your phone, you can still clean house. Start by getting rid of the images you probably don't need, like screenshots, selfies and bursted photos.

 

In iOS 9, screenshots, selfies and bursts are automatically saved to folders with those names (Photos > Albums > Selfies/Screenshots/Bursts). Get in there and clean 'em out.

 

If you're an Apple Watch user, you may have also noticed a ton of accidental screenshots saved to your iPhone. Delete all those silly Apple Watch screenshots as well.

 

And while you're deleting duplicates, you can also go ahead and delete any copies of your Instagrams. By default, Instagram saves all of your final photos and videos after you've posted them (Photos > Albums > Instagram). If you want to disable saving original copies to your iPhone, hit the Options icon (gear) within the Instagram app, then scroll down and toggle off "Save Original Photos."

 

 

Also, take note: Starting in iOS 8, deleting photos and videos doesn't actually delete them for 30 days. Deleted photos and videos get moved to the "Recently Deleted" folder. Apple did this to let you recover media you might have accidentally deleted.

 

It's a great idea, but technically, they're still using up storage on your iPhone until they expire.

 

To really remove them once and for all, go to (Photos > Albums > Recently Deleted) and select all the files you want gone for good and then tap "Delete" in the lower right corner.

 

iMovie (and many other video editing apps) are essential to editing videos (like these stunning timelapses). Much like desktop video editing programs, these apps create "video projects" whenever you edit a new video.

 

After you've finished editing videos, it's best to delete these projects so they're not hogging up space after you're done with them. Video projects — especially ones with lots of different clips, audio tracks, transition effects and text — can add up. 

 

If you've got an iPhone 6S or 6S Plus, you can record 4K video, which has 4x the resolution of standard 1080p full HD resolution. That's an insane number of pixels.

 

4K video recording isn't turned on by default, but if you're recording in such high resolution, know that the files are going to be larger than normal.

 

Bigger file sizes means less storage on your iPhone. Like photos, it's a good idea to transfer 4K videos to a computer or delete them altogether once you've shared them online.

 

It'll be hard to part with such crispy footage, but it's not like you'll be able to appreciate all that extra clarity anyway on your iPhone's screen; a larger 4K display is a requirement to fully enjoy 4K footage.

 

I never thought it would happen, but it has: People are choosing streaming music services like Apple Music, Spotify and Tidal over buying music.

 

With streaming music services, your music is stored in the cloud and generally only accessible when you're connected to the internet. You can choose to download some music for offline listening, but most people don't bother anymore.

 

If you can't remember the last time you listened to your music downloads, it might be a good time to look at the music files stored on your iPhone and delete them. At least most of them.

 

6. Manage your email apps

Many of us have tried using different email apps. Many email apps sync and download your entire inbox so you've got them for offline access.

 

You definitely don't need a dozen email apps. Narrow down which email apps you actually use and remove the rest. Even better: consolidate multiple email accounts into one email app.

 

Our recommendation is Outlook. But the Gmail app and Apple's own default Mail app are solid, too.

 

If deleting an email app isn't an option, double-check which accounts are synced to each app. There's no reason to have your primary email address synced in two or three email apps, eating up storage and also guzzling battery life in the background.

 

 

Software is weird. In March, Redditor eavesdroppingyou discovered a trick that somehow frees up storage space.

 

The trick requires your iPhone to have less than 1GB of of space left. You then rent a movie from iTunes that exceeds the amount of storage... and poof... it somehow frees up more storage. 

 

Mashable's Kellen Beck confirmed the trick works and after several movie rentals regained 3.9GB of storage back. 

 

What exactly is happening here? It's not sorcery, that's for sure. Your iPhone is most likely deleting old cached files, cookies and histories to make room for the iTunes movies, which it deems is "important". Because of course it is — anything you buy from Apple's digital stores are priorities!

 

iOS 10, which will be available to consumers this fall, is chock full of new features. It'll also come with a few that'll tidy up your iPhone and free up some space.

 

Apple will finally let you remove many of it stock apps from your device. It's not a full uninstall, but hiding them means you'll no longer need this folder anymore.

 

Taken altogether with all of the tips we've outlined above, you should be able to regain a bunch of storage on your iPhone. 

 

Rumor has it Apple may introduce a 256GB iPhone option this year. So you if you're a digital hoarder (like me), you might want to start saving up in case it comes true.