iPhone - 5 great methods to save storage space

Five simple ways to save space on your iPhone without deleting precious photos.

If you're constantly plagued by that annoying "Storage is almost full" message - which usually appears at the most important moments, like when you want to take a photo or video - there are some simple ways to help free up space on your iPhone without deleting photos you want.

Rent a great movie

This may seem a little (to a lot) "deaf", but it works, especially if you have a large chunk of your iPhone space occupied by that "yellow 'other'".

• Open the iTunes Store and find a great movie (it's best if it's HD to take up a few GB of space).
• Choose to rent it rather than buy it (to pay much less). You will get a message that there is not enough room on your device - which is a good thing and MUST be done, so we want the movie to be big so it won't fit.
• Then go to Settings > General > iCloud space and usage
• Look for the storage space held by the yellow 'other' and you'll see it's magically gone.
• It goes without saying that the space it was holding was allocated to your device.

Delete forgotten and unnecessary apps

We usually get excited by the possibilities of an application and install it with the intention of using it "someday". Only that moment almost never comes.

Do you keep a lot of these apps on your phone? And - even worse - do they also take up a lot of space on your iPhone? A great reason to get rid of them is that they will yield valuable storage space that you need for other tasks that you actually do frequently.

• Go to Settings General > iCloud space and usage > Storage management.
• Wait a while until all your apps are listed and how much space each one is taking up.
• Choose the ones you don't need and those that take up a lot of space and you don't use often and delete them.

See also: iPhone - Wear on the charging cable, can you avoid it?

Clear space from the photo settings

There are a couple of culprits in the Photos app that are taking up space unfairly and they are not your photos at all.

One of them is My Photo Stream which syncs your photos with iCloud and creates an album called "My Photo Stream" which takes up space.

So if you don't want your photos to sync automatically via iCloud, turn off this feature found in Settings > iCloud > Photos. Then you can sync your photos by connecting your iPhone to your computer.

The other "space stealer" related to the Camera itself is the HDR setting that takes HDR-optimized photos. The problem is that this setting always keeps the photos you take double - one normal and one HDR.

So, this way each photo takes up twice as much space. If you really want to take HDR shots, go to Settings > Photos & Camera and scroll all the way down until you find the HDR setting.

There, turn off the "Keep normal photos" option so that duplicate versions are erased whenever you take an HDR photo.

Deleting old messages

Chances are that you're sending and receiving more than enough messages - and these, if stored, certainly take up a lot of space over time. More likely, you probably don't want them all.
To delete them there are a couple of ways ...

• Open Messages.
• Find a conversation or message you don't need, swipe left and select "Delete".

For automatic deletion of several old messages at once ...

• Go to Settings > Messages.
• Scroll down and find the "Keep messages" option and tap it.
• There you will find that you have the option to have messages automatically deleted after 30 days, 1 year or never. Choose the option you want (30 days is best).

See also: iOS 10 - Enter more than one fingerprint on your iPhone

Clear the browser caches

You may be familiar with this trick from computers, but it's used on the iPhone as well. On the one hand you may see some delay in loading web pages you visit frequently, but on the other hand, you may have a significant freeing up of storage space.

Plus it's something that you have to do from time to time, because again these memories come up.

• Go to Settings > Safari.
• Select "Delete history and navigation data".

If you're using Chrome instead of Safari, do the following:

• Open Chrome and click on the menu with the three dots in the top right-hand corner.
• Tap Settings > Privacy > Delete navigation data.

from Elichord