02-05-2021

How To Clean Up Your Phone Storage



MANAGED to fill up your iPhone storage? You can free some space in seconds. We reveal the handy tricks for cleaning up your iPhone that you need to know. Every iPhone comes with limited storage spa. How to free up phone Memory space on Android. How to free up internal storage on Android. How to clean phone memory on Android. How to clean unnecessary dat. Head into Settings Storage where you can see what percentage of your total storage you’ve used, and what types of apps are eating it up. Photos often take up the most space, so if you haven’t. How to free up storage space on your Android phone: Clear your Android phone’s cache. After using a phone for a few months, chances are you’ll have at least a gig of cached data cluttering up.

As you use your iPhone, it gets filled up with all sorts of things: apps, photos, videos, messages. And that’s fine, but it also gets filled up with stuff you have little control over and don’t necessarily need.

If you've ever checked your storage, you know there’s a vaguely named Other category that often takes up more space than Photos. Even if you have plenty of storage on your phone, knowing some unspecified stuff is clogging it up can be frustrating. Let’s take a closer look at what Other data is, whether it’s the same thing as app cache or Documents and Data, and how to clear it.

What you'll need:

  • Your iPhone
  • Gemini Photos, an iOS app for photo cleanup
  • Internet connection

What's the difference between app cache, Documents and Data, and Other in iPhone Storage?

The relationship between these three concepts can be a little confusing. But the easiest way to understand it is that they're like Russian dolls: the Other category in iPhone Storage contains the Documents and Data of all your apps, and Documents and Data of each individual app contains that app's cache.

What is app cache on iPhone?

App cache is a bunch of files, scripts, and media that are loaded every time you open the app. Rather than loading those files all over again every time, the app saves copies of them locally on your iPhone and fetches them more quickly next time they're needed. Which is great, because it helps your apps work faster — but that cached data can quickly add up and occupy a lot of space even if you don't use the app anymore.

Browsers also cache bits and pieces of the websites you visit, which means that your favorite websites will load super fast, and that your iPhone browser will get bloated in no time.

What is Documents and Data on iPhone?

In Settings > General > iPhone Storage there’s a list of your apps sorted by the amount of space they occupy. When you tap on each you see how much the app itself takes up, and then how much its Documents & Data do. So what are those “documents”, exactly? They can include the following:

  • app cache
  • login details
  • preferences
  • offline media content

Depending on which apps you use more often, some of your biggest space hoarders will include browsers, social media apps, and content-heavy apps like Spotify or Netflix. Identify apps that have the largest chunks of Documents and Data, they will be our targets in the next section.

What does Other mean in iPhone Storage?

In iPhone Storage, Other comprises your iOS and all of the files that don’t fall under labeled categories like Photos, Apps, or Media. These include app data (also known as Documents & Data), call history, notes, voice memos, Mail and Messages attachments, completed reminders, and similar tidbits of user data.

Although none of these files are particularly big, they tend to add up, especially if you have a lot of apps and actively use browsers.

How to delete Other on iPhone

Let’s start your iPhone cleanup with the easy stuff — the files you created yourself. Go over all your apps and delete unneeded:

  • message attachments in Messages, WhatsApp, and other messengers
  • email attachments in Mail
  • completed reminders in the iOS Reminders app
  • notes in the Notes app
  • voice memos
  • voicemail
  • your call history

Don’t forget to empty the Recently Deleted folders in Notes and Reminders, as well as empty the Trash in Mail. After that, we’ll move to the trickier part of Other data: files generated by your apps, also known as app cache and Documents and Data.

How to clear cache on iPhone

Unfortunately, most apps don't give you access to their cache. And iPhone cleaner apps that claim to clear app caches can't get that access either — it's just the way iOS is built. But apps like Safari and Chrome do allow you to purge their cache, so we'll provide separate instructions for them.

How to clear Safari and Chrome cache

This works pretty well for browsers, because Safari and Google Chrome actually allow you to delete cache, either in iPhone Settings or in the Settings within the app.

To clear Safari cache, do the following:

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Scroll down to Safari.
  3. Select Clear History and Website Data.

For Chrome, follow these steps:

  1. Open the app.
  2. Go to Options > Settings.
  3. Tap Privacy.
  4. Tap Clear Browsing Data.
  5. Select the browsing data you want to delete (cookies, history, cached images and files) and tap Clear Browsing Data.

Some other apps have this feature as well, so rummage around in their Settings to see if you can clear the cache.

How to clear app cache for other apps

The majority of cache-heavy apps like Facebook and Snapchat don’t have a built-in cleanup, so the only way to delete cache for an app like that is to delete and reinstall the app itself. Before you do that, make sure you have all your login info: deleting an app will clear not only its cache, but all its Documents and Data, including login details. And you probably don’t want to get locked out of your Facebook account.

Once you're sure you have all your login information, here's how you can delete the apps:

  1. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
  2. The apps at the top are the ones occupying the most space. Tap on an app to see how much Documents and Data it has. This is all the cache, login details, and offline content the app has accumulated over time.
  3. If it looks like a lot, tap Delete App.
  4. Repeat for all your 'heavy' apps.

Now go to the App Store and reinstall the apps you just deleted. You'll notice they'll have far less Documents and Data, which means you've successfully purged the cache.

Is clearing cache bad?

Clearing cache isn't bad in the long run. The first time you open apps and websites after your big cache purge, they might feel a little slower. But once they re-cache the resources they need, you'll be up to speed again.

What's the point of cleaning up cache if apps and websites will regenerate it anyway? Well, you're getting rid of useless data from the random website you once read an article about measles on, or that game you played twice and forgot about it after. All that cache can add up to gigabytes, so you're reclaiming storage for the things you actually need. Plus, according to moms, you should really clean up every once in a while.

How to delete other Documents and Data

Apps like Netflix, Spotify, and Google Maps allow you to save content for offline use, which is a great way to stay entertained or find your way around when you don’t have internet access. But once you’ve watched that Black Mirror episode, you probably just leave it there, and the app continues hoarding data and using up space.

Deleting and reinstalling the app like we suggested above will definitely help. But if you don't want to re-log into all of your apps, try deleting just the offline content. Look around in some of your apps and see if you have offline content left behind. It can include:

  • Movies and series in Netflix
  • Music in Spotify or Apple Music
  • Areas in Google Maps
  • Files in Google Drive or other cloud storage apps
  • Videos in educational apps like Coursera and Skillshare
  • Podcasts
  • Books
How to clean up your iphone storage

With all that done, the Other section of your storage bar should shrink considerably.

Bonus tip for a cleaner iPhone

Clearing app cache, long-forgotten offline playlists, and login data is a great way to declutter. But if your goal is to clear any and all useless stuff on your iPhone, not just Other data, we have a bonus tip: clean up your photo library.

Sure, nobody likes deleting their photos, because those are memories and you keep them for a reason. But most iPhones have a fair amount of photos that are useless clutter, not memorable shots.

These include multiple photos that look the same (taken to pick a good one later); photos of notes, bills, schedules (taken for a temporary need and then forgotten); screenshots (same case); photos that are plain bad (dark or blurred). You'd be surprised how much cleaner your iPhone feels when you get rid of all that dead weight! Here's how to do it:

  1. Download Gemini Photos for iPhone.
  2. Tap Similar, and then on a set of photos.
  3. Look through the photos in this set to make sure you agree with the Best Result.
  4. Tap Delete.
  5. Repeat for all your similar pics!

When you're done with Similar, be sure to check out Screenshots, Duplicates, Videos, and Blurred. Finally, go to Other and swipe through all the remaining photos: up to keep a pic, down to delete it.

We do recommend you give your Camera Roll a cleanup — not only will it save you some storage, but it will also make the photo collection on your iPhone cleaner and easier to navigate. That can be time-consuming, but with an app like an app like Gemini Photos you'll be done way faster.

That’s it, hope this helped you understand the confusing Other data – Documents and Data – app cache relationship and clean up your iPhone a little bit. Be sure to come back to this checklist every once in a while to keep your iPhone clean.

With high-resolution photos and console-quality games, your iPhone storage fills up in no time. Even with a 128 GB model things can get out of hands fast. And if you’re using a 32 or 64 GB iPhone, chances are you’ll see that pesky “Storage Almost Full” alert much sooner.

Luckily, there are lots of things you can do to clear storage on iPhone, both manual and app-powered, so let's take a look.

What you'll need:

  • Your iPhone
  • A photo cleaner app Gemini Photos
  • Your Mac
  • A macOS cleaner app CleanMyMac X
  • Internet connection

Why is my iPhone storage so full?

Memory

Your iPhone may be full of things you don’t really need. Since they take up a lot of valuable space, it’s important to find out what they actually are. Here’s how to check and manage storage on your iPhone:

  1. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
  2. At the top, you’ll see a color-coded bar showing how much space you have left, how much is taken up, and what's taking it up. The biggest categories are usually Photos and Apps, but that depends on your usage.
  3. Below there is a list of your apps sorted by how much space they take. You can tap on each app to see how much of that space is the app itself, and how much of it is the app’s Documents and Data.

Depending on how you use your iPhone, you might have a huge and bloated Photos app, bursting with photos and videos. Or it might be games and social media apps that are hoarding the most storage. Below are five easy steps you can follow to free up storage on iPhone regardless of your iPhone use.

How to clear storage on iPhone

Chances are, there’s a lot of unneeded clutter on your iPhone. And that’s actually good news. It means you can free up a significant chunk of space without deleting the things you want to keep. Here’s how to free up storage on your iPhone, step by step:

  1. Clean up your photo library
  2. Clear browser cache
  3. Clear app cache and other app data
  4. Delete attachments in Messages
  5. Delete offline content

Step 1. Clean up your photo library

If you’ve checked iPhone storage like we suggested above, you already know who the main space hogger is (looking at you, Photos). Of course, wiping your whole photo library clean is not an option, but there’s probably stuff you can get rid of:

  • duplicate photos, like those you downloaded twice
  • similar shots (like the five selfies you took so you can pick a good one)
  • photos of whiteboards, notes, checks, and things like that
  • screenshots you don’t need anymore
  • large videos you don’t like

You can go through your library and weed out these photos and videos manually, but a quicker and more convenient alternative is an iPhone app like Gemini Photos. Here’s how to free up some space with it:

  1. Download Gemini Photos and launch it. It will automatically start scanning your library.
  2. Go to Notes, Blurred, and Screenshots. This is where you’ll see screenshots, photos of text, and other useless stuff. All photos will be pre-selected, but you can deselect the ones you still need.
  3. Tap Delete All.
  4. Go to Similar. Sets of similar photos will be grouped and pre-selected, with the best photo in each set remaining.
  5. Review a set, select other photos if you want to, and tap Move to Trash to trash selected photos.
  6. When you’re done reviewing sets of similar photos, tap Empty Trash.
  7. Go through Duplicates, Videos, and Other to sort out the rest of your photo library.
  8. Finally, go to the Photos app, and scroll down to Recently Deleted.
  9. Tap Select, and then Delete All.

After a cleanup like this your library will shrink by a few gigabytes and become way easier to navigate.

Step 2. Clear browser cache

Clear Space On Android

If you often use your iPhone to browse the web in Safari or Chrome, keep in mind that your phone may be storing caches and other data that you don’t need. And you'd be surprised how much space you can free up just by clearing your browser cache.

Here’s how to clear Safari cache:

  1. Go to Settings.
  2. Find Safari.
  3. Choose Clear History and Website Data.

If you use Chrome, follow these steps to clear its cache:

  1. Open Google Chrome on your iPhone.
  2. Tap Options > Settings.
  3. Scroll down and tap Privacy.
  4. Tap Clear Browsing Data.
  5. Choose which browsing data you want to clear (browsing history, cookies, cached images and files) and tap Clear Browsing Data.

Step 3. Clear app cache and other app data

Unlike browsers, most apps don’t give you access to their cache and other data they store, such as login data. And if you tap on each app at the top of that list in iPhone Storage, you’ll notice it has several gigabytes of so-called Documents and Data. Here’s how you clear that app data to get more iPhone storage:

  1. Before you start, make sure you remember your logins to various apps or have them saved somewhere.
  2. In Settings > General > iPhone Storage, tap on an app at the top of the list. This will often be a social media app like Facebook or Snapchat, a messenger, or a content app like YouTube or Spotify.
  3. Tap Delete App.
  4. Go to the App Store and reinstall the app.

Yup, unfortunately, this is the only way to clear cache and other app data for the majority of apps.

How to clean up your mac storage

Step 4. Delete attachments in Messages

How To Clean Up My Phone Storage

Texting isn’t just about text, right? You’re sending and receiving memes, GIFs, selfies, little videos of your cat falling off the couch in her sleep. All that content is stored on your iPhone even if you don’t save it to Photos, and if you text a lot it quickly adds up.

Here’s how to delete all your attachments in Messages to clear some iPhone memory:

  1. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage.
  2. Scroll down and tap on Messages.
  3. You’ll see a list: Top Conversations, Photos, GIFs and Stickers, and Other. Tap on the category that occupies the most space. Keep in mind that in Top Conversations, you’ll be deleting entire threads, not just the attachments. If you don’t want to do that, stick to Photos and other content.
  4. Tap Edit in the upper-right corner.
  5. Mark all attachments you want to delete.
  6. Tap the Trash icon.

That’s it! Space-hogging attachments are gone.

Step 5. Delete offline content

You probably consume a lot of content every day — music, videos, podcasts and what not. And if you save that content offline to be able to play it on the subway or during a long flight, you have quite a lot of leftovers piled up.

As a result, apps like YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify can take up several gigabytes of iPhone storage each. So why waste space on those Stranger Things episodes you downloaded back in 2017 and a long-forgotten playlist you never listen to anymore?

How To Clean Up Your Iphone Storage In Ios 11

Let’s start with Netflix. Here’s how to delete Netflix movies and series you saved onto your iPhone:

  1. Open the Netflix app.
  2. Go to Downloads.
  3. Tap on the pencil icon in the top right corner.
  4. Tap on the red X to delete the video.

Next up, YouTube. To delete offline YouTube videos, follow these steps:

  1. Launch the YouTube app.
  2. Go to Library > Downloads.
  3. Tap on the three dots next to a downloaded video.
  4. Tap “Delete from downloads.”
  5. Repeat for each video.

Finally, to delete offline playlists or podcasts in Spotify, do the following:

How To Clean Up Your Iphone Storage

  1. Open Spotify.
  2. Go to Your Library > Music > Playlists.
  3. The playlists you downloaded will be marked with a green arrow. Tap on a playlist like that.
  4. Tap on the green arrow icon below the name of the playlist.
  5. When a confirmation popup appears, tap Remove.
  6. Repeat for podcasts, if you have any saved offline.

You should also rummage around in Podcasts, Apple Music, and other entertainment apps you’re using. Once you’ve cleaned up all the offline content you don’t need anymore, you’ll see how much iPhone memory you’ve managed to recover.

How to prevent iPhone storage from getting full again

Just like your closet, iPhone storage will get full again, and you will have to go through the steps above every once in a while. But there are things you can do to manage your oh-so-limited storage more wisely and not have to do that major cleanup quite as often.

Store photos and videos elsewhere

Even after you’ve trimmed some fat off your library, chances are Photos still hogs a lot of iPhone space. What to do? Transfer your photos and videos to your computer or to the cloud

If you have a Mac, the easiest way is to connect your iPhone and sync all media files to the Mac. Then you can delete the originals from your phone.

Note that when you sync photos with your Phone, some of them stay cached on your Mac. This cache occupies space on your disk after the sync is done, so it’s better to clean it up. A utility like CleanMyMac X is an easy way to clear iOS photo cache (and it’s free to download). In just two clicks you’ll remove all the junk files from your Mac.

Alternatively, you can upload your iPhone photos to an online storage like iCloud. It’s pretty convenient, because iCloud Photos automatically syncs every photo and video you take to the cloud, so you can access your library from any device, as long as it has internet connection. You do have to pay for iCloud storage, though, because the free 5 GB won’t be enough for your whole photo library.

Here’s how to upload photos to iCloud:

  1. Sign in to your iCloud.com account. It’s the same as your Apple ID.
  2. Go to Settings on your device and select Photos.
  3. Turn on iCloud Photos.

Now your photos are automatically synced to iCloud, which means they'll be taking up space in iCloud, not on your iPhone.

Disable saving duplicate photos when shooting in HDR

On iPhones that don’t have Smart HDR, when you take photos in HDR, your iPhone saves two shots: the original picture and the processed one. You will save a lot of iPhone storage if you disable saving these duplicates. Just do the following:

  1. Go to Settings and select Camera.
  2. Disable Keep Normal Photo.

From now, only the HDR versions of your photos will be saved. That said, the previous HDR and non-HDR copies of your photos will remain, so do run your photo library through Gemini Photos to find those similar shots.

Stop storing messages forever

Clean Memory On Android Phone

By default, your iPhone stores all the messages you send and receive … forever. This is convenient if you want to read your 2-years-old conversations, but not so convenient when you run out of storage because your brother sends you fifteen memes every single day.

To stop your phone from saving messages forever, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Settings and tap Messages.
  2. Scroll down to Message History and tap Keep Messages.
  3. Change Forever to 30 days or 1 year.
  4. You’ll see a pop-up message asking if you want to delete older messages, tap Delete to proceed.
Clean up phone storage

Bonus tip to help you clean iPhone storage

In iOS 11 and later, Apple brings storage management tools to your device. This means that you get unique storage saving suggestions based on your iPhone. They include things like Reviewing Large Attachments and Conversations, Offloading Unused Apps, Saving Messages to iCloud, and others. Therefore, if you’re running iOS 11 or later, go to iPhone Storage and check out the recommendations.

We hope you found our troubleshooting guide helpful in tackling that annoying “Storage Almost Full” message. Enjoy taking new photos and never have to worry about lack of iPhone storage again.