Even though Apple offers its devices with some pretty hefty storage options, the cost of these upgrades means users often plump for the cheapest option. This can quickly fill up, leaving iPhone users to snuffle around for little pockets of storage space to free up.
The problem is, once you’ve gone to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and examined the storage breakdown, there’s little indication on what you can do beyond that. Though Apple gives you some clues as to what’s using the most space, vague categories like “System Data” can encompass many different things.
Here, then, are a few tips for reducing that number and freeing up some much-needed space on your device.
Clear out Safari’s cache
If you use Apple’s browser a lot, it’ll build up quite a bank of data and caches. Go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and locate Safari. Tap on that and on the next page you’ll see the Website Data option. Open this up and it will show all the websites where Safari has saved elements for later. This can speed up repeat visits, at the expense of your storage. Luckily, there’s a Remove All Website Data button if you’d rather reclaim the space.
You can also do this for Offline Reading List and Downloads to clear up even more space, although if you don’t use those features much they might be empty already.
Review your Messages data and attachments
The Messages app can store a lot of data too. It makes sense to regularly review this data and manually delete what you don’t need.
You can do this by going to Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Messages > Review Large Attachments at the top. This will let you delete individual conversations or media, while the latter lets you easily remove the biggest offenders. You might have many gigabytes of space locked up storing video clips you sent years ago. Simply swipe left on any item you no longer need to easily delete it.
Optionally, you can enable Auto Delete Old Conversations, which automates this process in future for you, only keeping attachments for 12 months and then purging them.
Remove Mail cache
The Mail app can also build up quite a sizeable cache – but there’s a simple way to clear it. Not quite as simple as tapping a button, but almost. The method is to remove and then re-add your mail accounts.
Go to Settings > Account & Passwords then tap on your Email account, scroll down and tap Delete Account and then confirm Delete from my iPhone. Then all you have to do is tap Back and then add your account again.
These three tips will get you started, but you can also go through many apps manually to remove caches and downloaded data. Every app varies but many utilities have some form of function that will purge cached data. If not, you can always delete and redownload an app to ditch anything it saved since its initial installation. Good luck!