How to Free Up Space on iPhone and iPad

When there is a new iOS update released by Apple like the latest iOS 11, large numbers of iOS users cannot wait to upgrade their devices to the new versions. However, the most common problem they always encounter is “Insufficient Storage to Download” on their iPhone and iPad, which makes them hunt for solutions to free up space completely.

In this article, we will give you several methods to free up space on your iPhone and iPad. First, check the storage you have used, and to do this, go to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage. The figures displayed under Storage (not iCloud) reflect the amount of space used locally and the amount still available. Then click Manage Storage > Storage Settings, delete the big offenders you no longer needed. After these, continue to check this how-to tutorial to get several solutions to free up space on your iPhone 11/XS/XR/X/8/7/6/6s and iPad mini/Air/Pro with no barriers.

Related Reading: Basic Tips to Free Up Space on Mac>

Method 1. Backup Camera Roll on iPhone to Free Up Space

Photos are the biggest hogs, they occupy tons of space on iPhone or iPad. Imagine this: You’re about to take photos of the gorgeous view, but the warning pops up and says “Not Enough Available Storage”, then, you have to be forced to delete something in order to continue your photography. It must be pretty annoying right?

Getting rid of trouble is easy: Back up your photos and then delete them from your iPhone or iPad every couple of weeks. AnyTrans can help you back up your precious memory on computer with ease. This method will take away some GB of disk space.

Method 2. Delete and Reinstall Apps To Free Up Storage

Whether if you find out that you always have some rarely used apps on your iPhone or iPad? Actually, these apps will take up some space on your devices, which may also produce junk files and useless data. So, deleting useless or unwanted apps is a nice way to free up storage on your iPhone or iPad.

To figure out which apps are eating iPhone or iPad disk space, go to Settings > General > Usage > Manage Storage. You can view a long list of apps. Those most frequently used apps cache a lot of data invisibly, in order to free up space, you can delete the apps caches which take up large storage, and then reinstall them.

Method 3. Remove Unwanted Songs on your iPhone or iPad

Playing music on an iPhone or iPad is a common phenomenon in daily life, especially for music enthusiasts who may download thousands of songs on their devices. This means much space on the iPhone or iPad will be filled with music. To free up more storage on your iPhone or iPad, deleting unwanted songs is a great idea. You can do this by following the ways below:

1 Delete a Specific Song: Open Music App on your iPhone or iPad > Tap the Songs button > Scroll the song you want to delete > Swipe to right > Click Delete to delete the chosen song.

2 Delete All Music (Suits for iDevices in iOS 9 or later): Go to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usages > Manage Storage > Music > Tap on edit on upper right > Tap on the red minus icon next to All Songs > Tap on Delete.

Warm Tips: Before deleting songs on your iPhone or iPad, you should make a backup of these songs in incase. So you can use AnyTrans to transfer music from iPhone to computer for backup.

Method 4. Remove Old Podcasts and Voicemails on iPhone or iPad

Do you like listening to podcasts or voicemails from your iPhone or iPad more than twice times? Normally, you may not do this. If you have a 30 minutes podcast on your iPhone or iPad, it will occupy 25MB of space. If you have dozens of podcasts or voicemails on your 16 GB iPhone 6 or 16 GB iPad Air, or the storage is almost full. So, deleting podcasts from iPhone to clean up space on your iPhone/iPad is necessary.

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Method 5. Disable Photo Stream to Free Up Storage

Maybe you still don’t know the Photo Stream on your iPhone or iPad can automatically sync your last 1,000 photos to all your iCloud devices when connected to Wi-Fi, which means these photos will be taken up at least 1GB space on your devices. So unless you need to share your photos from your iPhone or iPad to other devices, or you can turn it off to save space.

To do this, go to Settings > Photos & Camera > Toggle off My Photo Stream on your iPhone or iPad to free up more space.

Related Reading: How to Transfer Photos from iPhone to iPhone>

Method 6. Clear Safari Cookies and Data on iPhone or iPad

If you often use Safari to visit various websites on your iPhone and iPad, the Safari histories or Cookies will be saved into your iPhone/iPad that you may simply do not need. As time goes by, it will possibly be taken up sizable space on your devices. To clear up space on your iPhone/iPad, you can do this:

Go to Settings > Safari > Tap on Clear History and Website Data > Clear History and Data from your iPhone/iPad to free up space.

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Method 7. Back-Up Photos to Dropbox or Google +

If you store lots of photos or Live Photos on your iPhone or iPad, there may be small room available on your devices. Although you can backup them to iCloud or iTunes to free up space, using Dropbox or Google + to store the photos is a great way.

To back up photos to Dropbox or Google +, you just need to sign up your accounts first, and then you can backup unlimited photos to them automatically.

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Method 8. Delete old iMessages on iPhone or iPad

iMessages on your iPhone are so convenient that you can send including text messages, videos, photos for free only under a stable Wi-Fi connection. However, while sending and receiving countless iMessages with videos and photos on your iPhone or iPad, it will eat up sizable space if you delete timely.

So you can delete the old or useless iMessages on your iPhone and iPad to free up space: go to Messages App > Delete iMessages by sliding left on a thread and tapping Delete button.

Method 9. Only Save HDR Photos on iPhone or iPad

For most users, photos may take up large rooms on their devices, and what they may don’t find out is that the new photos they take possibly being saved as two images. This means you will waste double room to store these photos. Want to know why?

This is because when you take a photo, iPhone allows you to save HDR images and the original non-HDR simultaneously. If you want to keep HDR images only, go to Settings > Photos & Cameras and toggle the “Keep Normal Photo” switch to off.

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Method 10. Using PhoneClean to Clear iPhone iPad Space

Want to free up more space on your iPhone or iPad after executing the above methods? Fortunately, here we will offer an all-around method – PhoneClean to help you clear up your device’s space with ease. It aims to remove all kinds of junk files from iPhone/iPad/iPod touch to free up more space, and also allows you to delete all unwanted files and data to get more available storage on your iDevice. More than anything, it will make a backup of iPhone automatically before performing any cleaning work so that you can easily get them back in case of mistaken deletion.

These several methods are also available for all models of iPhone/iPad/iPod in iOS 7/8/9/10/11/12/13. Besides, PhoneClean not only allows you to clear storage on your devices but also can help you restore your iPhone in a safe & reliable way.

Also Read: How to Fix Not Enough Space to Backup iPhone >

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