How to Free Up Space on Your iPhone or iPad

 How to Free Up Space on Your iPhone or iPad

How much space is left on your iOS device? Do you hit a wall whenever you try to update your OS or download new apps? What's the best way to move files you want to keep in order to free up space? And how can you make smart decisions about what to keep and what to delete? Follow these few simple steps, and you'll be on your way to a less overloaded, more organized iPhone or iPad.

Check Your Total Usage

First, assess how much space you have. Go to Settings > General > [device] Storage. At the top, you'll see a color-coded bar chart that outlines how much space certain categories of apps are taking up on your device.

iPhone Storage screen under Settings

You don't need to understand these numbers deeply. To update iOS, you'll want to have up to 6GB of free space. If you simply want to have enough free space so you can take new photos and install new apps without worrying about hitting an obstacle, give yourself at least 2GB of free space.

Note that when you add your available space and the used space, they won't add up to the total size of your phone's storage. That's because it doesn't factor in the space being used by the operating system.

Find Apps Taking Up the Most Space

If you continue to scroll down under Storage, you'll see a list of all your apps, in order of how much space they consume.

Select any app, and a new page shows the usage in two parts: the amount of space the app itself uses (in light gray at the top) and the space used by the app's data and documents. For example, the Podcasts app shown takes up 1.63GB total: 25.3MB for the app and 1.6GB for documents and data (that's all those podcasts).

iPhone Settings screen with App Size

Sometimes, this information helps you see that it's not the app that takes up space, but rather what you store in it. In this case, you can see that podcast episodes and photo-heavy Messages are taking up the bulk of the space on the device. In the case of podcasts, episodes can be quickly deleted from this menu by swiping left.